Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Turkey rules
After two days happy surfing, my BT Broadband Extra service (only £45 a quarter) collapsed again on Easter Sunday. Left it alone until Monday, then, after a good breakfast to get me good and relaxed, back to the good people of Bangalore. I think they must have marked my card because they were very full of very sorries and we quite understand that you are getting a bit fed up and would sir mind terribly playing with his black box just once more. So I do my model customer bit - having on this occasion got ready with screwdriver, large paper clip (with which to reset the black box on the word of command) and mobile phone. Go through the whole rigmarole again. Ah they say. We have to refer you to the line fault help desk. Wait for about five minutes while they raise a call with these people - clearly rather more involved than 'click here to transfer the current call to the new owner'. Where do BT get their help desk software from? Then the operator comes back on the line and explains that the new call owner will without fail contact me within 48 business hours and I am not to bother them before that. And against the unlikely event of this not happening here is a PIN number to quote. We are getting near the 48 business hours point and not a flicker from either the black box, Banglalore or anything else with a BT flavour.
In the meantime I thought I would try harassing the billing people. How about a discount on my £15 a month for the lost two weeks and all the bother? But I give up after ploughing through various 'key 9 if you do not want any of the foregoing' instructions and then waiting on a ringing tone for another five minutes. A wait interspersed with various messages every bit as irritating as the unecessary announcements on SouthWest trains. Clearly the Banglalore Help Desk software is up to telling the accounts department exchange not to take any calls from my number. So the system is joined up where revenue is concerned. All a bit of a waste of time but I felt better for trying.
But I won't jump ship quite yet. An informant in TB tells me that he was with the bearded virgin and he had no service for a month after someone put a spade through the line. The answer in his case was to terminate the direct debit - a bit drastic in my case as that might shut off the phone as well as the Broadband.
I read today an allegation that Kentucky University has withdrawn Holocaust studies from its carriculum because it offended the local Muslims who do not believe that the Holocaust happened at all. Extraordinary and outrageous if true. I think I will check.
On the same vein, I read yesterday that while the author of Maigret was spending a quiet if unheroic war with his family in the Vendee, he was visited by a particularly unpleasant policeman who was, it seems, concerned with sniffing Jews out of their hiding places. He was quite convinced that the author was one, but ungraciously accorded him a month to get his elderly mother (who lived in Belgium) to retreive birth certificates back to his great grandparents, from their originating churches. It would have been a good gesture to say: 'Yes I am a Jew you c***, and you're a dead Goy', shoot him and run for it - although maybe one's family would not be too impressed - including in this case a young child. In any event, gun was not forthcoming and somehow the mother managed to get hold of the required paperwork. So Maigret continued to flow.
Last week, in the rain, to London to see the art crack at the Tate Modern - a place which I still have yet to visit properly having decided, sight unseen, that they only display rubbish there. The generator hall is indeed an impressive space, but marred by the ramp, the purpose of which could surely have been achieved in some less intrusive way. The art crack was attracting lots of interest and, I believe, has had lots of arty words written about it. A symbol of the alienation of everything from everything else in this post-Iraq post-family post-modern world we live in sort of stuff. My take was that it was all quite amusing but ridiculously expensive for what it was. Let's hope some of the money gets back to worthy causes in the artist's native Columbia.
It was not even a very proper crack, with the wire mesh on which it had been moulded clearly visible in places.
At least one more tree down on the way to Cheam over Easter, a middle sized dead one. And my first sighting of a green finch this year - in much the same place as where I saw a fledgling green finch sitting on the road last year. Maybe they like this spot for some reason. They certainly don't like the garden where I have not seen one for years. Consumption of hot cross buns continues to climb. Must have broken the family record by now.
In the meantime I thought I would try harassing the billing people. How about a discount on my £15 a month for the lost two weeks and all the bother? But I give up after ploughing through various 'key 9 if you do not want any of the foregoing' instructions and then waiting on a ringing tone for another five minutes. A wait interspersed with various messages every bit as irritating as the unecessary announcements on SouthWest trains. Clearly the Banglalore Help Desk software is up to telling the accounts department exchange not to take any calls from my number. So the system is joined up where revenue is concerned. All a bit of a waste of time but I felt better for trying.
But I won't jump ship quite yet. An informant in TB tells me that he was with the bearded virgin and he had no service for a month after someone put a spade through the line. The answer in his case was to terminate the direct debit - a bit drastic in my case as that might shut off the phone as well as the Broadband.
I read today an allegation that Kentucky University has withdrawn Holocaust studies from its carriculum because it offended the local Muslims who do not believe that the Holocaust happened at all. Extraordinary and outrageous if true. I think I will check.
On the same vein, I read yesterday that while the author of Maigret was spending a quiet if unheroic war with his family in the Vendee, he was visited by a particularly unpleasant policeman who was, it seems, concerned with sniffing Jews out of their hiding places. He was quite convinced that the author was one, but ungraciously accorded him a month to get his elderly mother (who lived in Belgium) to retreive birth certificates back to his great grandparents, from their originating churches. It would have been a good gesture to say: 'Yes I am a Jew you c***, and you're a dead Goy', shoot him and run for it - although maybe one's family would not be too impressed - including in this case a young child. In any event, gun was not forthcoming and somehow the mother managed to get hold of the required paperwork. So Maigret continued to flow.
Last week, in the rain, to London to see the art crack at the Tate Modern - a place which I still have yet to visit properly having decided, sight unseen, that they only display rubbish there. The generator hall is indeed an impressive space, but marred by the ramp, the purpose of which could surely have been achieved in some less intrusive way. The art crack was attracting lots of interest and, I believe, has had lots of arty words written about it. A symbol of the alienation of everything from everything else in this post-Iraq post-family post-modern world we live in sort of stuff. My take was that it was all quite amusing but ridiculously expensive for what it was. Let's hope some of the money gets back to worthy causes in the artist's native Columbia.
It was not even a very proper crack, with the wire mesh on which it had been moulded clearly visible in places.
At least one more tree down on the way to Cheam over Easter, a middle sized dead one. And my first sighting of a green finch this year - in much the same place as where I saw a fledgling green finch sitting on the road last year. Maybe they like this spot for some reason. They certainly don't like the garden where I have not seen one for years. Consumption of hot cross buns continues to climb. Must have broken the family record by now.
# posted by Jim @ 6:38 AM 
