I blame the recession.

The recession does funny things. For one, who would've thought it possible to have discounted airfares in the middle of summer? Well, there were offers galore and I decided to relieve the wife of some of her home sickness and send her to India on a month long holiday. The time for travel came and I soon found myself staring at the lonely end of an entire month home alone, bang in the middle of the British summer. Almost cruelly, the weather was perfect for going out; Wimbledon only suffered a day or so of rain. For those of you who are already squirming thinking this is just another lonely lover post that is a long-winded rant about how much I miss and love my wife, rest easy, this isn't. I did miss her like the dickens and I do love her, but I'm not one to wax lyrical about it. If I was, I'd be a poet, not a bean counter.

This is about the tremendous journey of self discovery that happened during the one month she wasn't around. The loneliness compounded a pre-existing, but unknown medical condition and made it get even worse. Thank heavens for air tight windows and relatively dust free Britain. Had this happened while I was in India, God knows what would have happened to me, I would probably have contracted deadly diseases like Malaria, Dengue and such, simply because this condition worsened.

The amazing part is I didn't need to go to a doctor either to diagnose my condition or to take corrective medication, self medication if you will. The disease began rearing its dark ugly head on the first weekend alone itself. However, it was around week two of this ordeal that I diagnosed it as Extremlitis Buttatis Lazishia (pardon my Latin). Like a bum who is speaking at his first AA meeting, I told myself, "I am butt lazy!" It came to me like an epiphany. Corrective action was extremely easy after that.

Allow me to explain. Wife and parents left on their respective 10 hour flights in different directions on a Thursday. Friday was spent slaving away at the office making up for lost time. Saturday came and I got up at a rather leisurely 10 AM, settled down in my usual place in the drawing room with a few slices of bread and steaming cuppa' and switched on the TV. I must have moved from the place around 10 hours afterwards, to go straight to bed. I got up on Sunday at a more respectable 8 AM and decided to get some work done, came to drawing room and my jaw dropped. What I saw was a semi-circle of assorted junk starting with 3 remote controls, 3 coffee cups, the plate I used to eat the day before, the X Box controller and a laptop. I kid you not; they were in a perfect semi-circle around the place I sat in. I gave myself a mental kicking and excused the action, or lack of it, as the first day of 'freedom' and that things would be back to normal, with the house remaining squeaky clean, just the way I like it. The rest of the day was uneventful, but only because I packed my bags and headed out to a friend's place for lunch and to watch India get hammered by England in the 20Twenty world cup.

The week passed reasonably uneventfully until Friday. The sink was full of dishes, the dustbin was overflowing and stinking to high heavens and I had only opened the fridge to take the milk out and replace it each time I had coffee - once a day. End result, rotting vegetables were stinking the fridge up. Said epiphany struck then. I was uncharacteristically living in squalor. I had become a lazy lump of trash. Before 7/12 happened, I enjoyed living alone, I enjoyed keeping my house very unlike a bachelor pad and I loved cooking alone and experimenting on myself. Now, I hated living alone, while I still enjoyed keeping the house clean, I had no will to do so and I hated cooking alone.

I am a man of knee-jerk reactions and hence I embarked on a zombie-like cleaning spree and chucked out 3 garbage bags of potentially fly, rodent and disease attracting junk. The remaining two weeks of wifey's absence passed off just like the good 'ol days minus the cooking.

I'm happy to report wife is back in town and all is well, the birds are singing, the sun is shining (although occasionally now 'coz when she came back, she brought a classic wet British summer back with her) and I've been cured of Extremlitis Buttatis Lazishia. For now.

Moral of the story: Want to live a happy contended life in a small corner of your world, don't live in a recession.

Of customer service and the lack of it...

Let's dream up a scenario. You're running a customer service organisation. How do you keep customer complaints to a minimum? Did I hear someone say, "provide bloody good service"? Wrong. You provide world class service when you don't answer the phone when they call to complain.

Let me explain. A large telecom company in the middle-east has been in the news because it tried to allegedly bug Blackberry users' phones so they could conveniently tap into the messages and emails sent from these devices. All in the name of national security and upholding the religious, cultural and moral values of the country, no doubt. Such high objectives must always be saluted. However, said nanny software implementation went very wrong and Crackberry's started heating up and running out of juice faster than you can say "tally-ho!".

I'm no master of human psychology, but life experience tells me that humans like to complain when things go south, so I am not completely misguided in thinking that the telecom company's call centres must have been flooded with calls from every bloke whose ear was scalded by a hot and dying Blackberry. You see heat is the last thing one wants when the ambient temperatures outside hovers in the late 40s, degree Celsius that is.

I also feel it is my duty to clarify what I mean by a flood here. The Blackberry population in this country is around 145,000 out of a total population of around 3,000,000. Which is not a frightful lot, but by any standard 145,000 callers at the same time surely come within the definition of a flood. Here comes the fun part. The company issued a statement and I quote, "This has resulted in reduced battery life in a very limited number of devices. Etisalat has received approximately 300 complaints to date, out of its total customer base which exceeds 145,000". A beautiful statement and I can almost visualise the PR exec who wrote this statement giving his colleagues a hi-five on a totally truthful statement supported by verifiable figures that completely clarify the magnitude of the problem, putting an end to this circus once and for all.

Nope. The same paper that carried this statement also carries another article on this subject and I quote, this time from the newspaper, "Gulf News alone received 239 complaints about the issue since running an article on the troublesome patch on July 13.

Many of the complaints cited either a lack of response from Etisalat’s customer support lines, or a lack of awareness of the glitch among customer support agents."

Did I just visualise the PR exec scurrying for cover? I guess I did!

So there you have it, to provide the best customer service and get the least amount of complaints on your service, don't pick up the phone.

You want the icing on the cake? Etisalat has now found a solution to the problem - wipe your device, delete every scrap of data on it and make it as clean as the day it was born in the factory...

Wimbledone

Wimbledon came and Wimbledon went. My interest in Tennis waned quite a bit after my teen idols Sampras and Graf retired. I found that the blokes who came afterwards didn't exactly play the same brand of tennis that the players of the '90s played. Gone were long rallies, fast volleys and Boris Becker style diving returns. In came a sort of "wham-bham-Thank you ma'am" brand of tennis where big servers and bigger ground strokes spelt the death of interesting matches.

The way games are played changes and I'm all for change, but more than anything, what caused me to lose interest was a combination of quick buck stars who had short careers, made a quick exit. There were no more idols to look forward to. I also sorely missed long standing rivalries a la Sampras-Agassi, Graf-Seles. In a world of short careers, there was no time for outstanding duels.

When Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal started vying with one another for top marks, it rekindled my interest, but again the brand of tennis played didn't quite appeal to me. All that changed on 5 July 2009. Watching the kind of game Federer and Rodick played in the final made me wonder as to how many other gems I missed in the past 5-6 years. Blow for blow, shot for shot, these two players matched each other. It was like watching two gladiators fighting it out in a Roman amphitheatre, each one looking for that moment of weakness that would give them the break they needed. That moment did not come for 4 hours and 14 minutes. Sure, they was the one instance in the second set tie-break when Federer won 5 points in a row to come up from 5-2 down to take the set. In a match which had upwards of 75 games, Federer broke Roddick's serve in only 1 game and that game won him the Championship - that's what I call the mother-of-all-breaks!

Rekindling of desires aside, there were a few things that bugged me to no end:

Commentators. In the era gone by, commentators used to say something relevant, something intelligent, some interesting information and gave us, well, commentary - what was wrong in the shot played, better ways of doing it, strategies going through the players minds etc. Not any more. I have high regard for the likes of Boris Becker and, in my opinion, he's right up there with the likes of Pete Sampras, but he just doesn't cut it as a commentator! The blokes these days say stuff for the sake of saying stuff. No more match analysis, no more strategies, no more opinions. Here's a typical example. Federer hits a cross court winner. Commentator: "Federer going for the forehand cross court shot, getting it in. The score is now 40-0". I can see that you knuckleheads! This is the type of commentary you'd expect to hear on the radio, not on TV! Oh, and this would be followed by 6 million replays of the shot from every angle perceivable and as if that wasn't enough, you'll have a graphical representation of the same shot, just to spice things up. This observation, many would agree, is not restricted to tennis. Sports in general seems to have gone to the dogs where commentary is concerned. Most of us would remember the havoc Mandira Bedi created in the world of Cricket a few years ago when she "showed" (wink, wink!) up on TV and had nothing intelligent to say, well, this is something similar, only instead of looking at noodle straps and hearing dumb talk, you get to hear stuff of the same IQ level from a suited and booted Boris Becker or Tim Henman! The prevailing logic seems to be that commentary is the retired players' club with automatic right of entry.

Andy Murray. I know I'm being cruel to Andy here. Bless him, he's extremely talented and young and is definitely going to make it big and have a 'Murray Hill' in the not too distant future. That said, when he was denied entry to the finals by a stellar performance from Roddick, I heaved a sigh of relief. I couldn't have handled another day of Murray Mania that took over the British Press over the past month and half (ever since he won the Queens or whatever). He was portrayed as some kind of demi-god who wields a magic wand disguised as a tennis racket and at one stage, some papers even seemed to hint that he is the solution to the economic climate by providing the junta with something to look forward in these bleak times. If this was India, there would be temples at ever cross road (in the middle of the junction, no doubt) in Murray's name, such was the idol worship. One may argue that coming from India, I have no right to say anything about idol worship. One may get a fat lip for saying so. In India, we need idols. In a land of a billion plus people, there is such a dearth of talent that we need blokes to look upto and talk about endlessly. Leave alone talent per-capita, talent in its entirety is conspicuous by its absence. Take Cricket. We have 15 people who are on the national team. 4 of them sit out each game secretly hoping someone from the remaining 11 fall and break their legs so that they get a chance. Of the remaining 11, 6 misfire at any given point in time. So we have 5 people with talent representing 1.3 (?) billion people. You do the math - I can't handle such large decimal numbers. Britain is not like that, they have talent overflowing from every nook and cranny in every sport. Footie (hell yeah!), Rugby, Cricket (they've got a team that misfires most of the time, so I'll discount that one), Tennis, Swimming, Cycling and God knows what else. But you've got to give it to the press here in the UK. They build temples for every sportsman whose sports happen to be in the news at the time. I only follow the Tennis news and was a bit claustrophobic with all the coverage of Murray that vied for my elusive attention.

Speaking of attention, I'm now looking forward to watching matches which Federer plays and hope Nadal gets alright soon, for they have now captured said attention.

I give you my word, I have just been Bauered

I have recently spent roughly 17 hours of my life living in a land where one is free to do anything, you want to come back from the dead? Check. Want to acquire WMDs to destroy the world as we know it? Check. Want to destroy a country? Check. Want to make your daughter Secretary of State? Check.

You see, I spent the last weekend catching up on Season 7 of 24. Another marathon session with Jack Bauer confirms the following:

'tis said Jack Bauer refused a syringe at a blood bank. Instead, he asked for a gun and a bucket. And that 9/11 only happened because Jack Bauer was on vacation. He'll never go on vacation again. All I can say is, Jack Bauer can:

1. kill at will (do you think he is the dubble-woh-sevan of America?)
2. taken out of a Senate hearing with consummate ease
3. whomever he thinks is necessary
4. the President of the US of A assurances at will, and the President will ignore everyone else and go with Jack's decision, just because he "gave his word"
5. every order given by commanding officers
6. be given access to classified information at the drop of a hat even though he doesn't have clearances
7. doesn't have to eat
8. get his friends classified jobs, just because he wants to work only with them, and most importantly,
9. justify all of the above!

The list is endless and so is the fun. Do not, for one instant, be fooled into thinking the Prez of the US of A is a puppet in Jack's hands whenever America faces a crisis. The Prez can also do the following:

1. appoint her own daughter as the Secretary of State without having to consult anyone and opposition parties are not even mentioned
2. every time there is a set back to National Security, she can look at the bearer of the news and say, "How can this happen? I don't care how its done, I want the person who did this be found immediately!" - I counted her saying this atleast twice every episode
3. stand by her guns and ignore all advisers, security analysts and common-sense, just because Jack said so (refer point d under things Jack can do above)
4. the first gentleman can be conned by any dimwit and end up being kidnapped. No points for guessing the IQ of the first gentleman

While all this is fun, the blokes intending to wreak havoc on USAland are no better:

1. they will let Jack infiltrate their gang in a matter of minutes and entrust him with the most critical part of the assignment, which Jack will screw up anyway
2. they get double crossed easily
3. they know the names and addresses of relatives of all government agents (how's that for doing their homework)
4. they all end up dead
5. they all end up dead, but a select few can be revived from death to make a comeback that leaves many more dead!
6. they have names like Dubaku (I cracked up when I heard the guy's name, how can a dubaku be scary?)

I'm not sure how many have seen the latest season of 24, I don't want to spoil it for anyone, so all I can say is nobody is safe, it's safer to stay indoors and lock all doors and windows :).

While watching it, another thought came to mind. The show takes place in America, where the counter terrorist agents have access to roughly the following methods of surveillance (give or take a few):

1. satellite which provide coverage of any place in a few seconds with HD clarity as if taken from a helicopter around 500 meters above the ground
2. surveillance cameras (even if they are private surveillance cameras, they are mysteriously linked to Uncle Sam's offices)
3. traffic cameras
4. infrared cameras from satellites to track heat signatures

This got me thinking. If the show were to be shot in the UK, all the satellite technology in the world would be redundant. All the agents would need is access to surveillance cameras. There are millions of cameras in this place. There was a report I read recently that every Londoner, on average, gets photographed by 300 cameras. Add to this, the proposal to have road cameras that can track every journey made by every vehicle in the UK using a network of number plate recognition cameras, blokes like Dubaku don't stand a chance!

Despite all that, there is something about that show that is gripping. You know Jack is going to kick ass in a way said ass has never been kicked before, but you still hang around to see it happen. It takes exhaustion to overcome you before you decide to switch off the TV and hit the sack, only to get up bright eyed and bushy tailed the next morning and hitting the couch with a vengeance to make up for time lost resting tired eyes.

The suspense is built up in the beginning of each show, right upto the half way mark, stalls midway and builds up towards the end and boy!, does it finish with a bang or what, leaving you gasping for air and can't wait to watch the next episode.

From having watched all seven seasons (5 of which were watched over a 4 day period), I can say the best way to watch it is continuously. If you watch it on TV, the commercial breaks will kill the tension, so will waiting for a week to get the next episode.

Having said that, I think the producers should start thinking beyond WMDs and nukes to spook people, mass alien infiltration anybody?

P.S.:

Did you know that Jack Bauer once forgot where he put his keys. He then spent the next half-hour torturing himself until he gave up the location of the keys.