My detailed mobile bill

Folks, I had shifted to a post paid mobile connection, a few months back. The idea was to escape from the frequent recharges. And I did escape from that. But after a couple of months I realized that my per month mobile expenses were soaring like never before.  I had to do something.  I requested for a detailed bill from my service provider, so that I could identify the possible areas for cutting mobile costs. For the sake of not getting sued, I wouldn't tell you which my service provider is. It’s the one whose ads feature this round headed thing called boo boo, doo doo or something. Too tough a clue, I guess.

Detailed mobile bill for the month of April

Monthly rent : Rs 200.00

Standard call charges : Rs 169.50

Special tariff call charges : Rs 134.00

Actual call charges : Rs 223.00

SMS charges : Rs 63.00

Service charge for calls made to toll free numbers : Rs 31.50

Charge for changing your handset twice and making us send the GPRS and MMS settings twice : Rs 25.00

Charge for not using MMS : Rs 50.00

GPRS charges for browsing the – you don’t want us to disclose, do you? – websites : Rs 175.00

Charge for activating your ring back tone and setting it to the randomly chosen song “Oonche se ooncha banda potty pe baithe nanga” from the film Dum maro dum : Rs 35.00

Sudden termination of the above service upon your frantic request : Rs 250.00

Delivery charge for the confidential SMS from Microsoft lottery : Rs 15.00

(The above mentioned confidential message was ‘Congratulations!! Your number has been randomly chosen by Microsoft lottery and you will be given an amount of 20,000 USD. In order to transfer the money, send us your bank account details and credit card pin number in the following  e mail address microsoft123@gmail.com. Sent via ways2sms.com’)

Charge for talking to the customer care executive (female) :  Rs 344.50

Charge for talking to the customer care executive (male) :  Rs 1.50

Charge for delivering the paper bill to the wrong office address and then re delivering it to the right address : Rs 65.00

Activation of national roaming when you were within the circle and deactivation of it when you were outside : Rs 135.00

Some random charges that is not really worth knowing : Rs 16.00

Charges, which we forgot, why is being charged : Rs 44.00

Activation of all other unwanted services : Rs 90.00

Deactivation of wanted services and then, reactivation of them, upon your request : Rs 120.00

Addition mistake – Rs 47.00

Total – Rs 2234.00

P.S :-

This post is totally fake. The only purpose of this post is to support the author’s false claim that he is a creative person.  

Stepping into the cubicle

The infrequency of updates in this blog has crept up to the standards of Aamir Khan movies. There is a lot to write about, but the busy routine of idling around and sleeping takes away all the time. There is a blogging spree around the corner, but before that, let me just write one about the recent turnarounds. 

So, after the highly enlightening engineering course, (ie, B tech in er.. what was it? Fashion designing? Whatever. Oh, electronics, it was. Anyways, both are highly inter related no?) I prepared and wrote CAT. Quite unfortunately, I couldn't attend my IIM L and IIM K interviews, only because I didn't get an interview call from both of those institutes, very much like the rest of the IIMs also. Almost joined Mudra Institute of communications Ahmedabad, but it didn't work out in the end. I would say, the whole MBA thing got a little too much 'the greatest football player in the world' in the end. Now when I say that all I meant was it got a liitle messy, you would probably want to strangle me, or smack your own head on the wall. I strongly suggest the second option. The unexpected series of events forced me to join for a job. And yea, after my highly commendable efforts in engineering, my parents thought that it was no more a good idea to invest money in my education. Fair enough. So I landed up in the office where I am working now. But not as simple as that.

Getting employed as a software engineer is not easy. First, you have to clear an objective type exam which is, specially designed to check whether you can stare into a computer screen for a fair amount of time, and click on random options, without starting to play solitaire, or browsing the web. That is a little tough, but if you have attended atleast 50% of your engineering lectures, you probably are capable of even watching a race between tortoises, without getting bored. Once you clear that test, you get to attend technical and HR interviews. Now, that's a complicated process. But let me simplify it for you, with an example. Have you seen any of the mutual fund TV advertises? The interview process is very much similar to that. In the advertise, they try to convince you that the best possible way to invest money is their mutual funds. After the ad, they read a statement, as fast as a human being can possibly read. Nobody understands a single word. Not even Rajnikanth. But still, everybody knows what it was all about. If you invest in their mutual funds and lose money, they will not be responsible. Even though totally pointless, it's not possible to avoid that statement in the end of the ad. In the interview, the panel asks you programming questions. You are supposed to answer, or in some cases, write down, the programs that you have learned byheart, the previous night. They might also ask you questions like, 'Why you want to work for this particular company' etc. and you are supposed to praise the company as much as you can. If you are as over promising and under delivering as me, you might also have read the wikipedia page of your company, and might have plenty of facts and figures to state. The whole process is pointless, you know that, the panel knows that. But that's the way things are. It just can't be avoided. 

Getting through the whole process was a wonderful experience. Employed with a software MNC. Looks good on my profile. Marriage profile, of course. I felt that I have also got into this elite group of Information Technology people. But soon enough, I started to realize that nine out of ten people I see in Chennai are working in IT companies. Take a stone and throw it in a random direction, it will surely hit a software engineer. There were even rumors that IT companies have started to recruit stray dogs and cattle, after running out of people. I heard this very, very scary story, last week. A software engineer threw a stone at a stray dog, and that dog, later turned out to be his project manager. Shudder.                        

After I got selected, I had to undergo an online training process. It's objectives were like, to prepare us for the highly competitive work environment and equip ourselves with the essential software technologies. In my case, it served the purpose. After the training, I found myself being well versed with java. I had this profound insight that 'Marjawa' and 'Mitjawa' have actually nothing to do with Java, and the song writer wasn't actually describing his software coding experience, unlike as I thought earlier. I used to be a gifted one, with a natural flair for writing bugs. But things got better, later on. My coding skills improved a whole lot, and I learned two languages. Java and Tamil. Tamil, I can understand while java I can read and speak. That's good enough, I guess.

The only complaint that I have about the office is that I am not allowed to use any browser other than internet explorer. I used to think that IE was only for downloading Firefox.

Jokes apart, office life is so far, so good. Not that I am contented. But still, I am happy with the numerous possibilies that life is offering, at the moment. I have made some good friends and have had a few fun moments. Financial independence feels really nice. Wanderlust is taking over, so some weekend travelling will happen, soon. Looking forward to that. ;-)   

  



  

Update

Nothing much to update. Have a couple of half written posts waiting in the drafts, but when I read them, I just realise how lame they are. Have been to Coimbatore for a couple of days. That place is not too far from the border of Kerala, but the difference in culture just amazes me. And yea, the diffrence in bus charges, too. I could travel ten kilometers for 3.5 rupees, while that is just the minimum charge here in Kerala.

Btw, I got my perkytweets Tee. In case you don't know, it's a contest conducted by Blogadda, in Twitter, for writing crispy one liners. The one that I wrote was, 'Dabangg broke 3 idiots' initial collection record. An idiot alone, defeated three idiots'. Ok, I know what you are thinking. If I could win a T shirt for that lame joke of mine, the funny people among you could probably win a textile shop itself. I don't know how I won the prize, but I really appreciate their kindness for sending me a free T shirt. I would appreciate it even if any of you did the same. Wanna check? Try sending me one.

For an amatuer Unix user, is Ubuntu the better choice? Let me know, in case you have any idea.

Simply try Googling the word amatuer. Aha! What results!

What a day, in other words, Wordpress or Blogger

What a day. Serene. Beautiful. Just can't refrain myself from typing a few lines.

In the morning, my sister prepared a hot and sour chicken soup for me. It was so spicy, that simply the fumes from it could probably burn a paper. But once she cooks something for me, I must have it. That's what the deal is. Besides, I just can't disappoint her. So, I had it, managing a smile on my face, and also, nodding in appreciation. I saw the love which was served along with it, and, hopefully, nobody saw the smoke that was coming out of my ears.

Then, while taking bath, I applied this mixture of shikakai and I don't know what all other things, on my hair, as a part of my persistent duel with dandruff. A bit of that mixture oozed into my eyes. If I had to wash my eyes with either this mixture or the soup that I had in the morning, I would have chosen the soup. After a frantic effort to wash the eyes, everything looked ok to me. I could see everything, and that was a strong indication of both the eyeballs being in the respective sockets. But, alas, my eyes had turned red.

I switched on the TV hoping to see a good mallu movie, and tuned into the mallu channels. There, they had this superhit movie, which was featuring in the mini screen, for the first time, as they said it. But I had seen the movie four times, in the same channel.

I switched on the computer, which was the last asylum. Opened my blogger account. Decided to check the newly introduced 'stats' section in Blogger. Got encouraged, seeing that my blog has got a total of 862 pageviews till now. For a moment only. Very soon, realised that 600 of those pageviews could be mine itself, and got discouraged by the same amount or more, by which I had got encouraged, earlier. I dug into further details, and had a look at the search terms by which people found my blog, in Google. The top two entries were these.

1. Mayanti Langer cleavage
2. Grand mathur fucking

Aha. What is this, a porn blog? The first search had this post as a result. I had written a review of the book, 'Inscrutible Americans' by Anurag Mathur, long back. The second search had that post as a result. Aargh!

So what a day it was! Agree, folks?

But apart from all that, I want to tell you something. I have started to think about the future of this blog. I created this blogger account, two years ago, while I was in college. Purpose was to write a story or rather an exaggerated description of a funny incident that happened during a lab exam, in the class blog. Then, wrote a couple of similar posts there, about some other incidents. Writing felt nice, and I started posting in this blog. I enjoyed writing, and it helped me learn, considering the fact that I had studied in Malayalam medium schools, till tenth.

There are two types of posts, here. First one, which are inspired by the incidents in my life, and also, random updates about my life.

Second, inspired by the stuff that I read. Mostly current affairs.

Over the time, I have learned that I enjoyed writing things that belong to the first group. All my friends who were forced to read, acted like enjoying, the same posts. So, I will not write anything about current affairs, from now on. And yea, none of the National and International leaders seem to care. So why would I give them more valuable inputs? Let them sort things out on their own.

Now, the next thought is whether to continue posting here, or shift somewhere else. All the embaressing things that happen in my life, always made nice posts. So, if I were anonymous, I could write more freely. Thinking. Suggestions invited.

Is Wordpress better than Blogger? In case I am shifting. Where? Again, suggestions invited.

Anyways, a few changes are on the cards. And in the meantime, I have loads of other work to complete. Adios, for now.

Won't be posting anything in this space, for a while. That could be a week, a month or more. My posts haven't been of great intellectual value, I haven't been a regular blogger, and my posts are not anticipated by a large number of (practicallly none) followers. So why do I make an announcement like this? That's the way I am :-)