The week that was!!!

The most pathetic week that I ever had in a long time – A total technological nightmare :O

Thursday – 22nd Feb

One of my Juniors, Rushyal (our band keyboard player and vocalist), was visiting his parents in Dubai and I asked him if he could get me a Canon Powershot S3 IS for me. The fking piece of hardware is worth 36K over here, but he called me up in the morning and told me that it was 19K. My first instinct was to say a yes. But instead I called up dad – unfortunately he did not think the same and asked me to get something in the 15K range.

I told Rushy to get me something cheaper and we agreed on the Olympus SP-510 UZ. I went home with a bit of disappointment because acc to me the Canon S3 IS was a bit better. Later that day, dad told me that I could have the canon model. So I made a rush call to Rushy and inquired whether he could get the damn thing exchanged. Unfortunately the Place was a 45 min drive from his house and he agreed to check on it the next day.

This was pretty much the best news for a whole week to come

Friday – 23rd Feb

Got an official acknowledgment from Temple university that I have been accepted into the MPH program (My OWLnet page confirmed the admission). So the week promised to be good (or so I thought). That makes the tally of good news to 2. Rushy called up in the noon and broke the news. The shopkeeper had sold off the his last model of canon S3 IS and he could arrange for it the next day. As luck would have it, Rushy was leaving Dubai that evening. So now the camera has been purchased, but I’ll lay my hands on it somewhere in April when his mom returns to India.

A Minor setback in a series of unfortunate events. And believe me, there are loads of them to come.

I wanted to check my mails, so tried to log on to the net. I wasn’t able to connect the whole evening. On calling the Reliance Broadband customer care center, they told me that there was probably some problem with the modem and I need to reset it. I tried many times and still it did not work. So they finally lodged a complaint and told me that someone would answer me in the next 48 hrs.

Saturday – 24th Feb

Still no net connectivity for the whole morning and noon. I called at the call center ten times and I got the same reply. Someone will contact me within 48 hrs. I was beginning to have the feeling that my connection was disconnected. I gave a final call to the customer care in the evening and was shocked to hear that they had disconnected my service. On asking they told me that I had made a request for termination on 3rd February.

I remember making a call to customer care on 3rd feb, but It was because I was getting banned IP’s allocated to me. I wasn’t able to post any data to my server, so I requested someone from the technical dept to come and contact me. The stupid lady at the other end probably did not understand what I was saying in English.

I said – “Please get someone from the technical dept to visit me and I will talk over. If this issue is not resolved, then I might consider termination of account

Customer Rep Lady (to herself) – “Oh I’m so beautiful, my voice is sexy…. what was it? I thought the customer wanted termination”

So she wrote down a request like this (I actually asked for the exact words of the request upon later calls)

Customer want disconnection services as he is not able to write data to the server as he is repeat getting ban IP

What part is that is proper English??? I think Reliance is looking for cheaper employees and letting go of the quality of people that they hire. If only I could get the name of that employee…

I was getting desperate for connectivity right now. I needed to connect so that I could solve questions for my USMLE exams which are only days from now.

I called up at the local office and they told me that someone called Preity Shah had ordered the disconnection of my services. I remember her calling me up at 10AM on 21st and asked me if I had given any request for termination. I was busy attending patients in the OPD, so I just said that I did not give any such request and that she could call me after 12 noon. I did not hear from her and that bimbo just ordered a disconnection without my permission.

I had a lot of argument with that Bimbo arguing on a simple point.

Anyone could impersonate me on the phone and ask for a termination. Is it not the company policy to at least call the customer and inquire about the credulity of the call? That air headed bitch just gave the order without confirmation. I am thinking of going to consumer court dragging her and that call center lady, after my exams get over.

My point to all people reading this being, DO NOT APPLY FOR RELIANCE BROADBAND CONNECTION.

I decided to go for either BSNL or Iqara connection. BSNL guys told me that they’d at least take 10-15 days as they are having some problem with the passwords. So Iqara (you telecom) will have to do. I called them and they told me that they could restore connectivity by Monday.

Sunday – 25th Feb

Nothing eventful happened. I activated Mobile Office from my airtel card and had a sloth like connection for the whole next day, but yet something is better than nothing (N70 rules).

Had a Satya Narayan Pooja performed at my place today. Call me crazy but I had vowed to perform this pooja if I got into Temple University. It may feel superstitious but I don’t want to be on the wrong side with god. And it only takes 2-3 hours.

Airtel connection is pretty fast considering GPRS standards. I got speeds varying from 5-12 KBps

Monday – 26th Feb

As promised the Iqara guys showed up at my place in the noon and collected my previous pending payments before they could proceed with the renewal of connection. Fortunately the last time I disconnected from Iqara, those guys did not remove the cable. So this time around, they just needed to activate my connection and give me the cable modem.

But no one showed up till evening and I had to call them to get a reply -

“It will take some time as we are sorting out the previous dues against your account. The connection will be up and running tomorrow

Aargh… Another day to wait and another day of non-connectivity (5KBps connection basically means no surfing, was barely able to access USMLE World)

Tuesday – 27th Feb

As promised the Modem guy did turn up at my place in the noon (after a few dozen calls) in my absence and submitted the Modem and data cable to my place. I returned only to find that the adapter given along with the modem was a 9V adapter and the modem worked on a 12V adapter. So typical!!!

They took a whole day to replace the adapter and so one more day of studies lost.

Wednesday – 28th Feb

So he finally turned up early in the morning and replaced the adapter but my Woes were no where to be over. I connected the modem but it received no signal. A call to the customer care center and I figured that the cable must have been cut from somewhere. The only good thing about having a local ISP company is that help is always around and usually takes 2-3 hrs to complete. However in this case help would only be available the next day.

Another day wasted and I thought if I had applied to BSNL then maybe I’d have got connected by now.

Thursday – 1st Mar

I was studying at Kaplan in the evening when I received a call from my home. The cable was finally replaced and now I had connectivity. So there is a lord out there!!!!

Ppl ask me about the fuss I create over a week of staying offline. Believe me, it is very hard for me to let go of my PC addiction and 1 week of staying offline is like having to go through an eternity at Alcatraz… Not to mention the study time I lost in the midst of all this.