Instructions for irresponsibility

What our phones were capable of and the trouble they could get us into used to be much simpler.
Like, as simple as whether or not I would let my brother have a turn playing with the toy phone at Grandma's house, or get in trouble for not being a good sharer.
Nowadays things are more complicated.

My current phone doesn't have wheels or a pull-string, what it does have is a recording feature.
There are instructions for it in the little user manual. They are not your typical instructions, though.
This section of the manual is titled: Make Fake Calls.
"Simulate an incoming call," it reads, "when you want to get out of meetings or unwanted conversations. You can make it appear as if you're talking on the phone..."
Wow.
Instructions in how to be irresponsible and avoid dealing with uncomfortable or unwanted situations. Right there in the manual! This is an application setting already programed into my phone!

Maybe it's not just phone technology. Maybe the whole world is way more complicated than it used to be.
Dear me, we had no idea what we were asking for when we thought it was cool that a phone could follow you everywhere. Only now, it doesn't need the pull-string.

Shikara ride

My favorite thing about Kashmir is the lake.
The people.
The quietness.
The slower pace.
The beauty and culture reflected in its environment.

On this cold November morning, my friend offered to paddle me around the "block" of her neighborhood.

You can find anything you're looking for right there on the lake: groceries, phone charge, plastic buckets, sweaters, potato chips, pharmacy, carpets, shawls...
The shops were open, waiting for someone other than the locals to visit. The tourists have been missing for months.

The houseboats, too, are waiting for guests. Everything has been newly painted and repaired. There has been lots of time to fix those things you might otherwise never get around to.
All that's needed now is for someone to come back and enjoy all the fresh paint and improvements.

Happy phone service

When I arrived in Thailand, I put my Thai sim card into my phone and turned it on.
The screen lit up and told me I had a signal. Before I left the airport, I decided to "top up" my minutes.
It took 2 minutes for me to hand over the money and have enough time on the phone for my stay here.
How easy is that?

It was only two weeks ago that I had a terrible customer service experience in India--where I live and pay and pay phone bills. They had shut off my phone service with no warning and wanted passport photos and new documents and signatures submitted.
It was days of trying to figure out what they wanted and how I could get it turned in to them.

So different here.
So easy.
So peaceful.
So happy.
That's the name of the service, and that's what it made me.

Annoying

I have gotten a new phone to replace the one that was recently stolen. The new one has some setting on it that allows the mobile phone service advertisements to just pop up on the screen. A text message would wait for me to choose to view it, these just appear and light up the screen.
They are annoying.
Song quizzes where you fill in the blank.
What's famous so-and-so's sister's name?
Properties available somewhere.
And yesterday it was this one:
"hi my sweety sorry if i annoy you could you please call me back ########"
Yes, airtel, you annoy me. I will not call you back and I am not your sweety. Leave me be. And while you're at it: learn to use some punctuation.

Unwanted services

My mobile phone receives several advertisements every day.
Properties available for sale.
Job offers.
How to save electricity costs.
And matrimonial alerts.
I don't know how I got on the list for this last one. I don't know how to cancel it either.

So every once in a while I get a message which tells me about

a Hindu girl from Rajasthan, 28 years, dial ** for more information
a Muslim Sunni girl Bihar, Patan girl, dial ** for more information
a Christian girl from South, 157cm, dial ** for more information

Perhaps there is someone interested in this information, but I am not.
How do I get off this mailing list!?

Stolen and replaced...somewhat

My phone was stolen.
At least that's the best I can figure, because I can't imagine how it could have fallen out of my bag when nothing else had without my noticing.
In that same pocket were my business cards--also missing. So whoever has the phone, knows whom they should call to return it.

Bad thief person.

I called the mobile phone customer service to report the missing sim card. The experience was so unexpectedly positive that I almost didn't mind that my phone was missing.
Almost.

Last time my phone was stolen, I needed to go through a lengthy process of obtaining an affidavit.
This time?
Impressive...

My conversation with customer service went something like this:
Customer service guy: really-fast-Hindi-words-I-couldn't-follow
Me: I'm sorry, do you speak English?
Customer service guy: Of course, ma'am, how may I help you?
Me: I need to report that my phone was stolen.
Customer service guy: Oh, I am sorry to hear that. This is what we will do: We will immediately deactivate your current account number so no unauthorized calls can go through. Then we will courier to your billing address a new sim card. When you receive that, call the customer service center to activate it. This service will cost you 25 rupees, I am sorry for that. BUT, ma'am, I am most sorry to tell you that your data is lost and there is nothing we can do about that. I'm so sorry for the loss.
I was so taken aback by this immediate "fixing" of my problem, that I made him repeat it all, right down to the "your data is lost and I'm so sorry for this".
Yes, it was true: he said a new sim card would show up on it's own at my door by the end of the following day. No affidavit or police report needed. Wow.

And he was right! My new sim card was brought to my house this afternoon and the guy who delivered it offered to make the call to request that it be activated.
Nice.
I love good service.

Now to go about replacing all those phone numbers.
And, well, I guess I need a new phone, too.

Random

I never get over the things I see while in an auto ride through the city.
Here's a list:

• Girl slaps guy at bus station
• Man with chicken under his arm
• Man on the back of scooter holding a ladder straight up in the air
• Construction worker digs around dog
• Horse carrying bricks stumbles over speed bump, drops bricks all over the street
  

And you know what else? Amitabh Bachchan called me. (Okay, so it was just a mobile phone advertisement.)

Wire is not a mobile

The a/c installer had finally come to finish his job--after 2 weeks of being MIA--and he was again refusing to finish the work because he didn't have enough wire. Not only that, but he was also insisting that it wasn't his work, but an electrician's.
I knew, though, that I had the wire he needed. Somewhere. It's hard to keep track of things when so many other people move them around.
Anyhow, I asked where the wire was. The carpenter--who can't seem to understand a word I say, no matter what language--believed I was looking for my mobile phone. So he had the other six men in the house at that time scrambling all over in search of "madame ji's" mobile. Until finally one of them understood I was looking for the wire for the a/c.
Then it was funny. "Mobile," they all laughed.
No: wire.
Ayah.

Affidavit

I went into town today to replace my sim card. It was an interesting process.

First I had to get an affidavit reporting the stolen phone and sim card. To do that, I went to a tiny little hole-in-the-wall office where there were three men with typewriters clacking away incessantly. They typed out who I am, who my father is, where I live, where the phone was missing from, when it was missing, and that I would like a duplicate. When it was finished and stamped, it was very official looking, but you would have a hard time believing that if you'd seen where it came out of.

I wish I could show you pictures...sigh.

Then I took my official paper to the mobile phone place and they gave me a new sim in exchange for the paper and 75 rupees.

Now if only the phone, the numbers, the camera and photos were replaced so "simply".

I identify

I recently came across this quote from someone named George Herbert:
"I cried when I was born and every day shows why."
I'm identifying strongly with that sentiment.

My camera, my phone and 100 rupees are gone.
According to my best recollections, they were in my bag on a chair in the corner of the school room when we took our morning break. I'd used my phone just before school to make a call, the camera usually lives in my bag so that it's ready-at-a-moment's-notice for a picture opportunity, and the 100 rupees was so I could buy some vegetables on the way home.
I thought it was strange when I went to pay for the vegetables and couldn't find any money in my bag. When I got home, I dumped everything out on the bed. Nope, no rupee note. But I thought it was my own misplacing of the money. I looked for my phone to see if I had any missed calls, but it wasn't there. I didn't have a lot of time to worry over it --or anyone to call--so I didn't.
My phone didn't turn up by the end of the day, so I was hoping I'd left it at the school room.
It wasn't there this morning. Not in any of the places we searched, anyhow. And I also realized my camera wasn't in my bag.
Thinking about it now, there were a few other things out of place: my Bible was unwrapped from its cover; when I'd gathered up the bag to move it, it had been lying opened unlike the usual way I leave it slung over the chair arm.
Our break meant we were gone from the room hardly fifteen minutes. How sad that the thievin' whoever thought it would be worth it to rifle through my bag of unassuming appearance. :(

So there won't be any new pictures or videos to share with you. :(

I can't even begin to calculate the total value of the loss.
All my phone numbers from several countries and continents. :(
All of my 800+ photos taken since February. (What you see displayed here is all I've got left.) :(
The 100 rupees is nothing in comparison to the other two losses.
There aren't enough emoticons to type to display how sad I am.
:.(
:.(
:.(

Esplanade and Little India

"Helo? Helo?" We are trying to call you from Little India.
This evening we went downtown to the historical part of the city to see what was there and to eat in Little India.
Some of the buildings are from British colonial days and they have a different feel from the rest of the city.
We ate at one of the outdoor food stalls, where the plates were very big.

New grafitti and fixing phone lines

Today was the first day in, hmm....six weeks? that we had c0-op for school. It was the first day I'd been through the bazaar, otherwise when I've been out we've taken the long way around.
There are some new messages painted on the walls.

Phone lines and internet have also not been working as they should. Finally, the repair men are out to try and do something about that. This is the guy who fixes the phone lines.