I miss the missed calls :)

It’s been two years since I left college and stopped talking in the ‘missed call language.’  There are two constants in college: the prepaid balance in your cell phone is always low and you’re perennially out of cash. Almost everything in college was communicated through missed calls. It was like a code which was predecided. For example: one missed call meant you’ve reached the destination, two missed calls meant class is going to start and frantic missed calls meant the prof is in class and you better run with all your life!  It was such an effective way (read cheap and economical) of communicatin and you could re-write the language whenever you wanted :) 

How can you forget the time you made maximum use of the stop watch in your phone? When every phone call was preceeded by setting your stop watch to zero to make sure you don’t go over that one minute and if you do you don’t disconnect before the sixty seconds are over.

 I guess adversity is the mother of all invention :) The advertisity in this case well… non-existent cash ofcourse :P 

I’m impressed :)

About 3 weeks ago I ordered a laptop from Dell. They sent me an invoice charged my card etc etc. Two hours after they had charged my card something happened and I didn’t need to buy the 50k laptop anymore! I called the guy from Dell who had taken my order and told him that I didn’t want it. I was expecting a very ‘indifferent’ reaction but the person from Dell was extremely friendly. He said he would check if the laptop has gone into production if it hadn’t then he would cancel it otherwise I’d have to contact the customer service. Considering most of the customer service experiences I’ve had, I was expecting the answer ‘I’m sorry ma’am it has already gone into production and we can do nothing about it.’ Instead he told me that he had cancelled my order because it hadn’t yet gone into production and someone from his finance department would get back to me and initiate the refund process. Also, if I ever wanted to buy a laptop I could call him. I said yes I would and really meant it. I was so relieved, I had just saved myself 50k :) .

Today I received the cheque for the refund and I was expecting it to be less than the amount I had been charged. I was assuming they’ll atleast charge me processing fee or transaction fee or something. But to my utter amazement I got back the entire amount and before my credit card’s due date :).

I had another wonderful customer service experience. I had bought this Sony pen drive from Sony World in CP, Delhi. Accidentally, someone sat on it and rendered it unusable :( I thought I’d claim a replacement under the warranty but I just couldn’t find the bill (after  2 months I found it in my office drawer :P). Maybe I’m too optimistic but I thought I’d give it a try without the bill. I went into the store told them I didn’t have a bill and couldn’t  remember the date of purchase also. The store people actually looked up the last 6-8 months records for me and gave me a duplicate copy of the bill (they did this when the store was full). Then with the duplicate bill in my hand, I got to know that pen drives don’t have a warranty! All the trouble for nothing I thought :( The store person said that they would still send it to the service center and try. I wasn’t expecting anything but I still went back after a week and guess what they replaced my old pen drive with a new one :)  

Isn’t Ctrl+z just amazing!! :)

How often have we thought about Ctrl+z-ing something in our lives? Today I was going through this training and our trainer asked us ‘Which is one of the most amazing things man has ever made?’ I started thinking and the first thought that came to my mind was the wheel, someone from the back yelled ‘Ferrari F 350′ and a lot of random answers kept pouring out. Then my trainer said ‘Ctrl+z’ and his statement left everyone surprised. His next statement was ‘how often have we wished that we could Ctrl+z something in our lives.

For example, after an exam when you walk out of the room and suddenly realize that you made a silly mistake that could stop you from getting that coveted grade. What is the first thought on your mind? You hope with all your life that you could just go back for a minute and rectify that error or you could just Ctrl+z. I’ve had this desperate feeling so many times and I’ve almost pleaded with god to give us the ability to Ctrl+z. Maybe when God comes up with Life 2.0 he’ll consider adding this feature :)

Another passing thought, how many times have you wished you could give your specks or keys a missed call when you can’t locate them? Answer: Close to atleast a thousand :P

A Filmi Weekend !

I’ve been in Hyderabad for the past two weeks and having seen almost all the ‘tourist places’ (read Char Minar, Golconda Fort etc..), I decided to catch up on all the movies I had missed out. Well in Hyderabad the one thing that you can’t do at the drop of a hat is go watch a movie over the weekend. It’s an event that requires planning and making arrangements well in advance. It’s almost like planning a weekend trip ok.. that was a slight exaggeration :P

You need to book your tickets on a Tuesday or Wednesday if you want to watch a movie over the weekend. I decided to watch Jodha Akbar on Saturday at Prasads and booked my ticket on Wednesday. Then began the hunt for the second movie which I would watch on Sunday. After reading  a couple of reviews I decided to watch ‘Across the Universe.’  When I booked my tickets for ‘Across the Universe’ at PVR something happened that made me go watch a third movie. It almost felt like a revelation and saying that I was elated would be an understatement. You can’t blame me for feeling like that after all, I was getting a 50% discount on every movie ticket at PVR because they had an offer on my credit card !! :) I was so happy that I decided to watch another movie(s). The third movie was Taare Zameen Par but couldn’t find a fourth one because there were no other show timings that fitted my schedule :P

I’m quite a movie buff but my schedule in Gurgaon doesn’t allow me to catch up with movies on a regular basis. I liked all the three movies I saw. To describe them in a few lines each:

Jodha Akbar: Good Camera, beautifully shot, subtle emotions and a few extra sequences that could have been removed to make the movie shorter. A one time watch certainly.

Taare Zameen Par: The kid is better than Aamir Khan, a wonderful movie and an eye-opener. Please take a box of tissues if you generally tend to sob during films you’ll certainly need it here.

Across the Universe: Watch it if you like musicals and are a big Beatles fan. A certain sequence in the movie will make you think you’re probably watching an avant garde film but other than that it’s nice and worth a watch.