Rhythmic Dissonance

Why I Love My Broadband Connection

// December 3rd, 2007 // 3 Comments » // Funny, Internet

In September 2007, my ISP, Tata Indicom, introduced online bill payment. (Yeah! There are that technically advanced! )

This is what the bill I needed to pay back then looked like:

So I logged into their website and went through the whole process of payment using a credit card only to get a timeout error in the end. So I restarted the process, choosing to pay using my bank account. The same error resurfaced. I got a little worried now so I checked my bank account’s statement immediately only to find out that Rs. 1908 had been debited from it. So I called up Tata Indicom customer care (cc) and I was informed that they had in fact received the payment both the times but it was alright because that just meant that I wouldn’t have to pay the bill the following month. Phew! So I had payed double the amount I was supposed to, right? Wrong!

The bill I got in October looked like this:

So instead of Rs. 3816 that I had actually paid, they somehow received Rs. 22896! Could it be that they are trying to make up for the hell I had to go through because of them? I don’t think so. I still called up cc and asked the guy about it. He told me it was a system fault which would be rectified and that I didn’t need to worry. Since I had already paid for one extra month, I didn’t care much and forgot about it.

Funnily enough, if I look at my transaction history on their website, it gives the correct details:

But this month I again got a weird bill:

The due date has already passed and I did not receive any warning. My connection is also working perfectly. I still thought I would pay the Rs. 1123 that I should but their bill pay screen scared me. They want me to transfer a negative amount. Take a look!

I called the cc again today but I was told to call later because their systems were down. Lets see what happens now!

The Comeback

// April 15th, 2007 // 11 Comments » // Internet, Life, Ranting

The best way to return to blogging after almost three months would be to recap for all of you the major events that happened during this period that I was away. So here it is in my favorite unordered list format:

• I was feeling low for few weeks in Jan-Feb and I reached the conclusion that I was going through a quarter-life crisis. I don’t exactly know what caused it but without wasting too much time, I decided to do what I generally suggest people to do in such situations. Yeah, I decided to get over it and the best way was to do something that would make me feel good about myself and keep me busy.
• This brings me to the second significant event – I joined the gym! Yes, after contemplating doing it for years, I finally did it! And I like working out. I don’t understand why I didn’t do it earlier. Its been over a month since I started working out and I’ve already moved to a bigger, better gym. And I do feel better now than I used to around two months back.
• One of the major developments is also something I consider to be a significant achievement of mine. After months of fighting a losing battle with Tata Indicom broadband, I finally won the war. They replaced their copper wiring with optical fiber cable in my area just for my connection. Now isn’t that something! Of course, I showed my gratitude by upgrading my plan.
• After using Wikipedia extensively for a long time, I finally decided to give something back to it and have since become an active contributor. I generally stick to what I’m good at – Television and Movies – and looking at the low standard of most India related articles of these fields, there’s a serious need of more contributors like me (If I may say so!). And being somebody who is a good follower of rules, I am good at finding, tagging and sometimes fixing violations of policies.
• Once my broadband connection started working properly, I realized the power of torrents. I started downloading lots of movies that I wanted to watch and soon I was addicted. I now download at least 4-5 movies a week and since its really hot during the daytime nowadays, my weekends are spent watching these movies rather than going out. I’ve seen dozens of movies in the last few months and I will start writing a new kind of posts in which I would review three movies with some similarity. I think such posts would keep the blog alive in case I do not wish to write anything personal for some reason so that the blog doesn’t run the risk of being abandoned again.
• Last but not the least, I completed one year at my new (don’t think I can call it that anymore!) job. The going’s been good so far. Hoping it would be even better in the second year.

And I’m sure I must have already left a comment or two on the blogs I used to read. If not, expect one very soon.

Show off and Much More

// December 23rd, 2006 // 14 Comments » // Happy, Internet, Life, Movies, Ranting

First things first. Presenting before you, my totally new laptop, an HP Pavilion dv6114tx. I need a name for it. So please suggest a name. It should obviously be a heroic name like Merlin or something.

Looks sexy, doesn’t it? (The pic has been deliberately cropped to ensure that you don’t see the wire clutter.)

And now, the second showcasing of the post. Yes, its my brand new iPod 80 GB.

Please note that my palm just made its second appearance on this blog.

And I know that its not a very good picture but its difficult to take pics of gadgets for me so I can’t help it.

Now that we’re done with the aforementioned show off, lets talk about something else. Like how crazy I am about Tropicana’s Lychee Twirl. I drink it like water. Thank god I don’t drink alcohol. Otherwise, I would have been an alcoholic. I have absolutely no self-restraint.

Also, I’ve luckily found some awesome DVDs to add to my collection. I now own Airplane! which is like the funniest movie ever. Hey, its not just me. American Film Institute thinks so too. Plus, I have its sequel, the Police Academy series, The Naked Gun series and Hot Shots and its sequel. I’ve seen quite a few other movies and would recommend Finding Nemo and Khosla Ka Ghosla to everyone.

This post was written by me four days ago but thanks to the unbelievably excellent service from my broadband provider, Tata Indicom, it got delayed. Its only been 23 days since I first came in touch with Tata Indicom people and I already hate them so much. I never knew I was capable of so much hatred. I want them to be wiped off the planet. But lets not talk about them in this post. They deserve an entire post. Actually, they deserve much more but that’s okay.