Ahhh…It is that time of the year again. The amusingly cold weather, the smell of burnt gunpowder in the air, the heebie-jeebies of your parents transferred to you while lighting that extremely dangerous bomb and ofcourse the sweets. So many goddamn sweets! That, my friends, is Diwali. Wrapped up in 35 words. But there is so much more to it than only crackers and sweets.

There is family for the social bee,
there is food for the foodie,
there are gifts for the greedy
and love for the needy.

It is tacky, I know. Thanks for pointing it out anyway.

Happy Diwali

And that’s not where it ends. That is where it begins. A hectic day for basically every soul in every Indian household and a lovely night for most (read women don’t get to enjoy that much). While the shopkeepers make enough to buy a couple of gold bricks, the average guy is hit hard. Wow, I am diverting from the topic. The topic? What is the topic? BAH. Nevermind. This post is done. Happy whatever.

PS: The auspicious timings for pooja on 26th October 2011 for Diwali 2011 are from 6:03pm to 07:58pm in stable Ascendant (Taurus sign).

Who took a photo of me?

I need to get a life.. No, seriously.

“Today is the day Krishna slays Narakusara, Rama returns to Ayodhya, Mahavira attains moksha, and Airtel makes a killing. Happy Diwali.”

I’m not going to tell you like every other dumb “I will save the environment by not bursting 10 big crackers. That will make a lot of difference, will reduce pollution by 0.0000000000012%.” boy. Go ahead, burst as many crackers as you want. After all, I haven’t paid for them.

via TechPP and Gemmacorrel

I just received the monthly bill of my mobile phone or to say correctly, of my connection which unfortunately is Dolphin. Dolphin is under the so very good MAHANAGAR TELEPHONE NIGAM UNLIMITED. Unlimited because whatever it does has no limits. From giving a 599 combo plan subscriber the speed of 4999 combo plan (I’m not complaining) to owning Dolphin which does everything except giving a good reception not to mention a satisfactory customer support. It can do anything, ranging from anything to anything.

The customer support does exactly what it was made to do, make the subscribers wait. First you call the (if you have enough signal that is), then have the option of selecting   either Hindi or English. You press the desired key, send a DTMF but unsurprisingly it chooses what it wants to opt for regardless of what you wanted. Then you press the required keys to get to the customer careless support. At this point you should switch to the loudspeaker of your phone and get down to completing some work because this will take some time. At the same time don’t forget about the call too, not that it will connect to those careless support but might drop. You don’t really want your call to get dropped after waiting for a quarter of an hour (yes, that’s true).

And if you had the patience and you showed it. Wasted 15 minutes of your life to subsequently waste 15 more then there would be someone on the other end of the phone (don’t worry if there isn’t , waste 15 more minutes and try again) saying a very lousy hello not to mention the monotonous welcome-to-MTNL-customer-care-How-help-you-may-I. Then the torture begins. Sometimes, they pick up the phone, say hello and then hang up :/

They’ll ask for your mobile/ landline number. Be ready to tell it twice, they don’t get it the first time or maybe it’s the connection which doesn’t let them. You tell them their problem. They search it in their guide, ask a senior and reply

Sir abhi system hang hain, bad main call karna.

Or

Abhi problem hain, kaam nahin kar raha-thank you for calling. Have a nice day.

Or

Namaste sir, I am sorry Tuesday tak kuch nahi ho sakta because weekend ke baad holi hai.

And you keep staring your phone trying to recollect what happened and as to how you just wasted 15 minutes of your life.

But sometimes, mind you, sometimes your luck is good and the guy (girls are never) on the other end is good and is willing to help you. He talks with etiquette and in the language in which you feel comfortable. But you still have to go though the 15 minutes waiting time. I think the time has been planned so that only customers with genuine problems would be able to connect as prank callers would never wait so much.

Signal reception is amazing. Sometimes most of the time it is not there. It is there when you don’t need it and there when you need it. Most of the time the network is busy. More importantly if suppose you have 5 out of 8 bars and you dial a number, the bars start disappearing and eventually come down to the point of ‘no network available’.

You can’t put busy status on both, but after some time both assumes you are idle and the network gets busy itself.

The most awesome feature is the’ skip SMS’ feature. It is in built in all Dolphin connections. Basically what it does is it eats up all those SMS’s that were sent to your number when your phone was switched off. Ingenious, isn’t it? You will never, mind you never ever get to know who sent you what SMS! And you might receive a ‘Happy Holi’ SMS from a friend on Diwali. Don’t strangle the friend because it wasn’t his fault.

On a more serious note, I received my bill today. It was almost Rs 1100. The following are the death list details:

Airtime charges

a INCOMING AIRTIME                                                     0.00

b OUTGOING AIRTIME                                                     188.50

c VOICE MAIL USAGE                                                        0.00

d SHORT MESSAGE SERVICE                                           762.75!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You see there? I don’t think I need to explain the matter any farther. 762! OMG! How is that even possible! OK so I did explain it but will not any further. My mom will kill me! Ok fine, not anymore. I’ve taken a decision and will take the action shortly.

The Dolphin is sinking and it will take you with it, that is if you are using it. So, therefore I’m surrendering my SIM card. I don’t want such humongous bills at any cost.In a short sentence, it sucks! I am planning to opt for Airtel. I’ll be changing my number since the chances of MNP coming before they send me a 100k bill are not very bright.