Sify tales... part 6

So I’m a frustrated individual who likes to blog. What can say, except that one tends to get frustrated when you are trying to talk to a person about your problem and they keep avoiding you. Well I’m kind of going through something like that now.

5pm, I call up the SIFY guy. Tring tring… tring tring… tring tring… snap! The line goes off. Ok so the guy doesn’t want to talk to me. 5.30pm I call up the cable wala. I then get to hear this lovely story about how they have told everything to SIFY and that nothing is there in their hands now. How nice? As I said before in a post, that’s ‘business’!

Cut to the night, I’m like kind of bored and in the mood for some entertainment and I just noticed that my SIFY connection is not being restored here. So, I decide to call up the SIFY wala again. 2 rings and he’s on. I tell him my username and then he’s on about how I’ll get this done, can you call me back in 10min. I’m like, “Ok.”

13mins later (why am feeling superstitious now!), I call Mr SIFY again. He picks up and says that his call center people will be talking to me about it. (WHAAAAAAAT?!) So I ask him, when are they going to talk to me and he’s like, “They’ll call up in 5 mins”. Again I’m like ok. 5 mins later, no call, so I call up Mr SIFY again. Basically I’m just hitting redial by now. Now he’s like, “Oh, mein thoda nashta karne gaya. I’m in office only Sir, I’ll tell them to call you up.” Again I’m like, “Ok”. By now I’m sure the educated are wondering why am I going on saying, ‘OK’! LOL. Even I dunno why I’m being so patient about this.

I hit redial again after 15mins, because still no call center people are calling me. By now I’m like in a mood to really blast this guy. But then ‘lucky me’, he cuts the phone after like 5 or 6 tring trings! Typical! Guess that things aren’t going to get any better. I suppose that I’ll have to call him up now again! J Lets see what he’s go to say now. Probably it’ll be another 10 mins for the call center bungo brains to call up. I guess its getting boring to read this, but then I just keep asking myself, “Where is the professionalism here?!”

“Whatever happened to customer service? Oh, sorry could you please call our call center for your queries?”

Sify Tales… part 5

Ok, so now you’re either like waiting to read this post or you’re like sitting there wondering, “Doesn’t this guy ever stop?!” Well it turned out that the SIFY morons called up at my place when I was at work. Typical! Hmpf! Anyways, I got the message and the rang up the cable wala to find out what was happening. First thing that I’m asked about is, “Do you want to renew your account?” At this point I’m thinking, “Sure I’d love to renew your brain! Why don’t I first bang your current brains out!”

Anyway for some reason I kept my cool and then went through the whole story again. Of course once they heard my username they pretty much knew who I was. So the lady says that ‘shailu bhai’ is not around and will be in later. So I’m like ok, give me the SIFY guy’s number. So I get it. Phew! At least one thing went smoothly.

So, I call up Mr. SIFY and tell him about how I had called him up before and all. First question, “What’s your username” I’m like whatever it was. Pause… Then he’s like, “Oh yeah I remember. Mereko 2 ghanta de mein teek kar dega.” So I said Ok and kept the phone. Now at a time like this you should know that things don’t work so smoothly. Still I was driven by hope that something good would happen today!

I reach home, turn on the pc and voila, NO net connection! I got the good old message of, “Your account has expired!“ It was meant to be right? I mean I guess I was just a bit toooooo gullible today. Oh well. Looks like tomorrow I’ll again have to call him up and get the things done. Hopefully get the things done. Boy am I bored… No tell me how in the world are we supposed to trust service providers like this!

“Sometimes you’ll wonder why you keep trying. Thing will not look like getting resolved you’ll never know why, but then you’ll just try again anyway!”

Sify Tales... part 4

As I right this post, its interesting to note that I’m using a font called perptua, so that this post will perpetuate into the minds of people (aka SIFY for this post) so that they realise that something is a miss with their way of doing ‘business‘.

Business, it’s a funny term and often makes you feel that there ought to be no feelings attached to it. After all, a successful business cannot be run on sympathy! But, that doesn’t mean that a business is run without integrity or transparency. And well, its sad to say this, but what happened to me is just that. I was, to put it a bit harshly, swindled into paying for one month of internet and receiving only 10 days of it! In short ended up doing ‘business’ with people of no integrity, no transparency.

The question here that hits one is WHY? Well it happened because certain individuals prefer to do ‘business’. They don’t like to tell their customers what they are giving them. So for a person who for the past 5 years has never had to worry about download limits on his cable internet connection, suddenly finds himself faced with the harsh reality of seeing his account expire in 10 days simply because a 150MB download limit was suddenly capped on him.

Now, perhaps its alright to have this type of limit imposed, but then it has to be communicated to the person before the take up the plan! And, well ok it slipped your mind, hey we’re all human right? But then why oh why wasn’t it built into the software to warn the user that their 150MB for the day is over? Why I ask you?! I mean that is just sick. How can you as a user then verify that you haven’t been cheated of your limit for the day?

How do you know that when you transit from the paying to time to the free time (you get free access from 10pm onwards till 6am) that you’re not being charged now? How do you know? I’m afraid there is no way to know! You just have to take it on face value. CRAP! In short you just have to trust the integrity of a corporation that is not willing to even tell you when their plans change. So, even today, although you’re told that your quota is over, you could be pretty sure it isn’t because that‘s just how much integrity they have! In fact they probably don’t warn you that you’re reaching your 150MB limit just so that they can swindle some more money from us. Hehehehehe! Great ‘business’ model right?!

Hell, if this person had known that there was such a scheme he wouldn’t have gone to SIFY. He would have stuck on with the providers he was on previously or better still moved on to what he’s doing now. But the sad part here is that after being a customer to a provider (aka the cable wala) for 5 years this person is not at all valued. You’re just another person on the doorstep with the begging bowl as far as they’re concerned. Crap, who’s gonna stand for that!

What hurts you in the end is the fact that you think you’re paying for good service, but your actually stuck with something that gives ‘mediocre’ a bad name. I have no words to describe what has been happening, but I sure have acquired a lot of phone numbers of various personal from SIFY and cable walas. Personally, what’s the use of having those numbers cause every number leads you to another. Its like you’re playing treasure hunt and at the end of it all if you’re the first one to reach the end you’ll get your remaining internet days back!

So here it stands, with yours truly swindled out of 20 days of internet time that he paid for. Maybe there are some die hard SIFY fans out there who wish to bring up my ignorance to changing policies to justify the actions of their demi-god internet provider. But then what can a person do when they receive a receipt which very clearly says unlimited usage for a month. I guess they can’t say much right? Its always too bad for the customer cause the customer didn’t know it. Pity really, but then hey, THAT’S BUSINESS!

“There comes a time in a man’s life when realization shall dawn upon him. When that happens he better wake up!”

Sify tales... part 3

I hope that you’re not surprised by reading this post. Personally I’m not surprised by what happened today. To cut a long story short, basically, my SIFY net connection was cut again. Beats me what the hell those guys are doing up there. Jeepers its getting bugging having to go back to them again and again and again! AAAAAAAAAARGH!!!! Those bungo brains have done it again.

Anyway I did the usual thing to do, called up the local cable wala, got another cell phone number to someone, who tells me, “Yeah I received an email from those guys, but I haven’t gone through it properly. Anyway I’ll go through it properly tomorrow and let you know about it!” WHAT the hell man! Why can’t you do it now! Ok ok ok so its Sunday afternoon. But then this is the type of professionalism that we are be-fronted by.

Oh well… I can’t crib now though, cause I’ve just watched the most amazing test match. So I’m just going to move on to writing about that and well SIFY and my cable wala can go…. Well whatever I don’t care! LOL.

The match was just awesome! Gripping would be an understatement, but its just totally awesome to see the aussies get kicked! Personally I thought that once Pieterson was out, the aussies were going to nail up the coffin for the poms. But well surprise, surprise the English players aren’t the pushovers they used to be. They just stuck at it and the mental coolness that Hoggard showed in the end was amazing. I mean he could have really choked it up the way their keeper did.

Giles was the other hero in the end. I guess the best site on the field at that time was Ponting’s face! And in the English dressing room, it was Harmison who was just looking like, “Please get this over with cause I don’t wanna bat!” (He was next in if someone got out!) Anyway in the end, Hoggard blasted a four of Lee followed up with 2 more runs at the end of the over. So that left Giles 2 runs to get off Warnie. He played warnie pretty well actually. Except for this one ball, which I still can’t understand, how it missed the off stump! Anyway, in the end, Giles managed the 2 runs and England was partying at the stadium!

An amazing match! Looks like the poms might actually get back the Ashes now! In fact I get a sneaky feeling that they’re going to be learning some rain dances now so that they ensure that the lead in the series is intact! ;-) Of course, I guess its things like this that show you that if you keep your cool anything is achievable not matter how improbable! I guess that also includes dealing with cable walas for internet connections! LOL.

“Stay Kool Guys!”

Sify tales... contd.

So the story continues, and well its come to a rather meek end. Well at least for now. I'm writing this email after logging on from Sify account... :-P. Its pretty crazzzzy really, but when I called up to talk to 'shailu bhai' I didn't get to speak to him. Instead I talked to some lady, who kept asking if I wanted to renew my account. And I had to keep telling her that my account is not going to be renewed, but turned back on! [frustration... can u see my hair standing up now?!][Err what's left of it that is! Not that I'm going bald, but I suffer from insufferable paranoia of my hair falling. D'oh!]

I kept telling her about my 10 days and other stuff and eventually she gave it up to another guy. Not too sure who he was ,but then in the end he just told me not to worry and things would be back to normal. I guess they are, but it hasn't changed my decision. Its becoming an ever increasing pain to keep having to chase up people for petty issues like this. You'd expect a certain degree of professionalism from corporates today but what you get is this.

What cheeses me off in the end over here is that I've been with this guy for 5 years now. And this is the type of treatment that I a customer for so long is doled out. I guess, that's where modern business is heading. Old customers are more or less taken for granted. Pitty really... May the time change!

BTW, this story still ain't done, so keep watching this area and we'll perhaps see soemthing interesting happening! :-))

"He who has the gold , makes the rules!"

SIFY tales…

Notting Hill... 360

Notting Hill is a simply amazing movie. Guess I'm pretty late in seeing this movie, but as luck would have it, I caught it on Star Movies today. That too from the beginning! Somehow I thought I'd change the channel at any minute, but as the story kept rolling it kept getting more and more interesting. People always told me that its a good movie, but then just like coding, you gotta see it to believe it! I'm not going into the story here... for that you'll have to read my really awesome 360deg blog on yahoo! LOL!

Speaking of 360deg, its a pretty awesome thing from yahoo. I mean they've integrated just about all their yahoo services under one hood! Some pretty amazing really and something Google has been pretty pathetic about. Like I mean you have Orkut, GMail, Google Groups, Google News, etc, etc and everywhere you gotta log in and do things. And to share stuff across applications (ummm sites for non-IT personal) you gotta do a lot of well... "magaj maari!" (I'm not translating that... you dont' know hindi... TOO BAD! LOL)

Anyways, 360deg is cool. Damn I wish I knew how to put that little circle to represent degrees.. Anyway getting back, in 360deg, you can blog (a la blogger), you can write a profile and link to friends (a la Orkut), you can view all your yahoogroups from there and publish them for others to see. You can write somethign called blasts which is pretty nifty. You get to link you yahoo photo album with the 360deg profile. So you can easily share photos with friends. Just tell em to check your profile for updates. In short its awesome. I think yahoo is doing a great job with it. The help is cool, actually helps you for once! Trust me, there aren't many pieces of software around that have help that helps you! :-) So in ture salesman style, "Go get your 360deg profile now and avail of all the cool features!" Oh yeah, and add me if you get time. :-)

"One stop shops weren't pulled out of a hat, but they sure are damn useful!"

Of matches and snatches...

Well I'm starting this post in what looks to be a good position for India in the cricket final in Columbo. (Gee I hope its there...) Shittt Yuvraj just got out! Idiot! Oh well... at least 'The Wall' is still ticking.

2 hours later.....
It happened.... As it always does.. India lost the match.... So what else is news. The tag of final chokers is true! :-)) The only thing that I see is that they are now good snatchers! Always snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Lets just hope that they learn to do the reverse snatch as well sometime.

Well not in a mood to continue with this post.... snatches and matches and what not... forget it. I guess that's what its all about these days. Snatching the catches to win the matches.

"Catches win matches..."

Of Virus scanners and rain...

Its raining agian... So what, right? It always rains in the monsoon and anyway its nice to hear that rythmic beating of rain drops on the road. Its mainly nice since I'm sitting nice and dry inside. :-)

Well on a different note though, I installed this new free anitvirus called AntiVir. And I must say that it is really amazing. Already detected a trojan that well my previous antivirus couldn't. It then makes you wonder why you should pay these big corporates like Symantec the big bucks to protect your system when a free piece of software available on the net does a better job.

In fact I'd like to go a step further and say, "Why even take the 'effort' to crack the likes of norton or mcAfee, when you can get a free legal copy of something better!" (Okay I hear someone screaming lazzzzzzy in my ear). But the point is that there are better things out there. It kind of brings me to another point, as to why do we feel our system is safe only with these big corporate softwares? Why should we be so beheld by them? Afterall, in the end you'll find that they often aren't up to the mark when it comes to delivering a quality solution.

I think its been a trend in recent times, for large corporates to ride the wave of the aura that they've created around themseleves. We have the brand name, so even if there are few quality glitches, we can still charge people higher. And why is this possible? Why is it possible for these people to have a business model as successful as that?

Well... The answer is that there are gullible individuals like you and me out there to believe them. We're ready to believe all their big talk about how they 'pioneered' a technology or how they've adapted 'Six Sigma' or other great quality norms to their production lines. What we tend to forget is that in the end if the product doesn't work why should we be trusting them?

I think that there needs to be a change in perception with people. That doesn't mean to say that lets go and get only free software or only buy under dog stuff. I mean as far as usuability goes I'm sure that people will still agree that MS Windows is still easier than Linux. But, the point is don't be duped in by the brand names. Take a product, evaluate it. Make sure that it is giving you exactly what you should be getting. You should be getting value for your investments (by this I mean both time and money.) As I said, no point either wasting money on by a norton or in wasting time cracking it. Its still an inferior product in the end. (Gee I hope I'm not sounding too hard here...).

So people, I call upon you to wake up. Don't take things on face value. Spend a little time to explore the unexplored. If Chris Columbus didn't bother to do that we wouldn't have a booming capitalist country like the US to sell goods in. :-))

"A stitch in time saves nine! And that's the truth!"

Aftermath...

Aftermath... reminds me of slim shady... Well I'm not going to go into any details on that, but just struck me when I came up with that blog titile. LOL.

Well its been a good 4 days now... One might call it the aftermath, but then its been pretty calm. Was kinda hoping for some rain... couple of more days off ya know ;-)). Of course, in a funny kind of way its good to be back. (I think!) Ok so, I got almost a week off and I'm cribbing... I can just hear some of you murmering in your minds (Cribber!!!)

Well its been a slow week. Been cloudy and raining but nothing great. Buses, trains, etc all running well not a 100% normal btu still ok. Like yesterday morning there was this sudden shortage of buses... oh well... But I mean if you look at the traffic you'd think that all was back to normal here. The usual jams and honking on the roads.

Had soemthing weird for lunch.... whole body is hurting... Not sure what the hell is wrong.... Somehow I think I gotta avoid paneer during these next few days...Paneer se fever ho gaya... Sheeeeeeeesh!

Well, I'd type on if my fingers and brain would let me... think I'm receiving the shutd......
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mumbai rains pics

First things first, if anyone knows how to change the default font on these blog editors please do comment on this post and let me know!

Next I've put up some pics now that I took with my trust K700i, that has somehow, miraculously remained dry all the way through that trek I just blogged about a couple of minutes ago...

First check this pic:



This is the lead up road to the building where I work.More popularly known as SDF-II. BTW this is like 5 days after the adventure discussed before!

Pic 2: Guess what this is!

So for those who thought it is a river... well it is close to that now... :-)) But it is actually a construction site for a new building in SEEPZ. (Where I work!)

That's all I got for now. Am hoping to get some cool snaps of the railway lines as well... Lets see how that one works out! :-)

A week before tomorrow…

This space was actually reserved for cribbing about the likes of Airtel and other people who had been giving me a hard time over the last month or so. More than them, my so called bad attitude as well… but then as luck would have it I’ve got some better tales to tell which started
off from a week before tomorrow!

Well I guess it was pretty much a normal day, sitting in office for the usual drudgery. Of course there was something unique about it since as soon as I walked in, there was all sorts of preparations going. Got me wondering… What the heck is up?! 20 mins and a couple of emails had me also sitting there getting ready for a conference call. Won’t go into details about what was happening, but the outcome of it was that I was informed that I was now to lead a team.
Time goes on and it makes you wonder how quickly the weather changes. What started out as a sunny day was now really dark with cloud cover and rain lashing down, making you wonder if Mumbai had been engulfed by the ‘dark side’! The rain just kept coming and kind of made one feel that someone up in heaven had left the water running…

Another email later and we were rounding up people to go to Andheri station where we were hoping against hope that we’d get a train. It was to later turn out that this would remain what we thought it would, just a hope!

Everyone was ready to go and we descended the stairs of the building… I saw the waves in the basement hitting the stairs and I thought, “Well perhaps things will be better out on the road.” Wrong again mate! Getting to the road itself involved hiking through water that was flowing and hitting us just below the knees. And once we were out the gate of our complex, it got even worse. We suddenly found ourselves making it to the middle of the road, just to get out of what was now well above knee deep water.

It’s a times like this that people want to have some fun, and I had colleagues constantly trying to pull my umbrella away that I was grasping onto with dear life. Not that it mattered really, since I was anyway already wet from head to toe. That way it probably made sense to close the umbrella, but then I didn’t want my bag getting any wetter than it had to, especially since I had decided to put my phone in it…

Knee deep went to waist deep. People were just sitting in their cars… Made me wonder, will they even reach home today, cause the water wasn’t receding and the cars weren’t moving. It was kind of fun going through the rain, but then we didn’t really know the seriousness of the situation till we hit the highway. That was when we saw it all. Sometimes you wonder what havoc is and trust me, what I saw at the flyover was havoc. People shouting, asking questions, roads to the station being blocked off due to too much water flowing down them, and of course people being carried off from various places. To add to it you had the drops of water pelting down from the sky along with the honking of all the vehicles around…

The group split here. Some needed to head off towards the north, the rest further into Andheri. So we split, those headed north decided to keep to the highway with a hope of getting some transport later on. The rest of us started our way into Andheri. This however, took one detour, since one person wanted to go to Vile Parle, so me and another guy decided to accompany her there and then get back to Andheri since we live fairly nearby to the station. At the second highway junction, the one that went to the west end of Andheri, we bid adieu to two guys and then went on our journey into Vile Parle.

Now, Vile Parle was kind of interesting… empty in-roads and jam packed roads leading to the highway… Hmmm… I wonder why?! Well we walked and walked and walked, oh and did I mention that we walked? J Kept going through all sorts of lanes, not knowing what was lying below the flowing water ahead of us. Was kind of scary actually, especially when your companions decide to tell stories about people getting sucked down open manholes…

So finally we reached the destination and dropped off the person that needed to be dropped off and then started to figure our way back to the highway, which basically just meant following the same roads, but then you know how that is… Oh yeah, and we were like really cold and needed to really needed to answer nature’s howls and pleas to us… I’m not going into any details, but it was relief to have that howling out of my head!

So it was through the gray skies and drops of water that we kept going until we were on the flyover that connects east with west. Again had to go through patches of knee deep water, which, by now was normal. But what I saw from the flyover really amazed me. I just looked down at the railway tracks and there were hordes of people just walking along them, like some exodus. Was amazing, how nothing could kill people’s spirits out there. It was like just keep walking until you reach home!

Upon reaching the west it was now time for me and my friend to go our own ways. I had a simple walk home, but my friend I was to later learn had some adventures which I’m sure he’ll remember forever! Reaching home wasn’t the most enlightening thing, especially since there was no light. Well no light as in no electricity, there were candles and one lamp on… Was a real dampner at that point. Was cold and hungry and it didn’t look like I was going to get a hot shower for some time.

So in the end, there I was sitting at home in the dark, with just a cell phone, that while working, couldn’t call anyone else since no one else’s phone was working. I just had to sit there wondering, what everyone was up to and of course whether me getting into being a team lead had anything to do with the rains! ;-) As for the others, well, whatever adventures they were going to have, I did come to know of them later, but then that’s another story and shall be told another time. For now, this post is already too long and if your still here reading well then… KOOL!

“When the going gets tough, the tough get going”