The USS Quad Damage

On Seth’s Blog he makes the claim that making customers go through a bunch of phone menus is bad for business. I understand this, and agree, but I disagree with a broader implication I think he’s making: That contact centers as technology solutions do not help when it comes to solving customer problems.

I don’t believe this is true. Firstly, they help simple access to their data without the internet. Even though the internet is more prevalent than ever, sometimes all you have is a phone and a desire to find out how much money you have, or have spent, or… something.

Secondly, when someone answers the phone, you need to ensure that the person has enough knowledge, or the correct knowledge, to solve the problem the customer is having. There’s also dealing with the financial pressure of measuring and controlling the flow of calls to ensure that agents aren’t sitting in a call center twiddling their thumbs.

Thirdly, even if the problem is easy to solve and there’s an agent available and you end up talking to them, there’s the added problem of putting up with the agent as they fiddle through their system. Recently, I’ve had to wait for many minutes whilst agents had to fill in various details, and were in turn waiting for their system to load data (likely web pages) from the server, or otherwise had to fill in unnecessary forms for common activities.

Don’t get me wrong. I believe industry best practices for call centers can be much improved, and public hatred of phone systems is well justified. However, tacitly hating them without reserve is not helpful.

Look at my photostream, starting from here. This is what greeted me when I got back to work from India. Most people get cruel tricks played on them for their return prank. Often, the desk is trashed. Sometimes, it takes a long time to get the desk back to working order. For one of my friends, we turned everything on his desk upside down, from the computer, monitors, through to books, coffee cups, and other items. It would’ve taken a lot of effort to turn everything around again.

I, by contrast, got a masterpiece. Each item on my desk was meticulously covered and parodied, from the large object such as the Dimmu Borgir poster, through to the small objects like the Polio soft toy, the eraser, and my Children of Bodom ticket. It was a real shame to take it down. I’ve left most of it up (the stuff not required to do my job), it’s that good!

So I had a few more days to catalogue, which I hadn’t gotten around to doing. Not having had an hour of free time required to write this made it hard, and now I can’t remember most of what I did.

On the 12th I went shopping for you guys. Being in the sardine factory which is economy class airfaires, I had to factor in the fact that I had to stay under 20 kilos and everything had to fit in my luggage. When looking realistically, all my grand plans of buying awesome stuff for you guys crystallised into the reality of probably not buying very good stuff at all.

One of the things I know now that I should’ve known before: I should’ve bought more bangles. I thought I’d bring up the bangles and girls would think they were lame. At the very least I had the problem that I could only give bangles to girls, the bangles had to be of the right size, and whoever got them had to like them. As it turns out most of the bangles fit well, and everyone who got bangles really liked them.

Second thing: I had more room in my luggage than I realised. Actually, that’s not strictly true. I was packed to the rafters because of all the unnecessary crap I took to India. Worse, I didn’t take any presents for my Indian relatives, which left me no left-over room to get presents back home. However, I wasn’t really trying to bend the laws of physics. I really should’ve pushed the limits of my carry case.

Third thing: the luggage dudes will let you go over the limit. This one is still a hypothesis, strictly speaking. When checking in luggage, they treated our family as 4 passengers “total” as opposed to 4 individuals. This basically meant that our luggage had to be under 80kg total, instead of 20kg each. However, I did read for two of us that the weight was around 43kg.

I have some doubts as to the efficacy of my claim. For one, I never saw how heavy the other two luggage bags were. They could have been around 37kg. Secondly, there was a guard who (as far as I could tell) was hitting on the luggage girl, and he may have been leaning on the bags. The reading, having already been taken, could have been different to what I saw. Either that or they don’t care about a couple of kilos…

And finally I’ve realised: I have a lot of friends. I thought I bought a lot of stuff, but when I added it up I didn’t even really have enough pressies for my co-workers, not to mention my uni or high school buddies. I’m hoping they’ll be happy with pale re-tellings of my blog entries. One of the problems is that I wanted to bring back a variety of things, and most of those things were trinkets. The variety simply isn’t there. Now I have an idea of what’s available in the market, next time I’ll have to ask what to buy people before I go. I should’ve bought back a couple of shawls or something.

The day after, we went to watch Golmaal Returns which is an awful movie, but still pretty funny. My brother got more of the jokes than I did. After that we pretty much started packing for Delhi. Because of when the train to Delhi was departing (early – leaving at 7), and when the Airplane was departing (earlier – leaving at 4) we pretty much wasted two days because of interrupted sleep.

The final night we spent over another relative’s house in Delhi (he’s my Tayaji, but I think he’s my dad’s older cousin). We hung out with his two sons – Sunny and Bunny. I am not making this up. In India, Bunny is a perfectly acceptable nickname. I think. They both play the guitar and sing. They’ve only been doing it for a year, but must be applying themselves, because they’re rather good at it. They enjoy music such as Creed, Brian Adams, etc. They can also play some indian songs on guitar. My brother (who likes Nickelback) could relate to them, and they all played together.

Then we flew back far too early in the next morning and got no sleep. I was practically hugging my house when I got back, because it meant no more transportation, and a good night’s rest in my own bed. Taking planes, trains, and cars all over a country and to another really takes it out of you. It was worth it though. I met a lot of new people who I’ve been keeping in touch with (so far. Hopefully it’ll keep up), and had a great time in a country I haven’t visited in a while.

Today we were going to go to Amritsar to visit the Golden Temple, but this morning my brother threw up a lot. This implied morning sickness, which meant he was pregnant. As it turns out, though, he just got food poisoning. I was hoping he’d get over it by lunch time which would’ve meant we could actually go to Amritsar, but he did not, so I was stuffed. Instead I went to the Rock Gardens.

The rock gardens are a whole area made of rocks. It was made by a whole bunch of people over (I guess) a long period of time. The area is very large, and takes maybe half an hour just to walk through. We took about an hour with pictures, and we were moving fairly fast. The number of sculptures, terraforming, and other things put together is staggering. Simply wheeling in the amount of material it would’ve taken to build the gardens is mind boggling. Later, the cement bags which were used to keep the rock gardens together are used themselves to create walls and pathways. There are a lot of them.

The rock gardens are sort of a communal area for Chandigarh, and contain two amphitheaters for small performances, as well as a courtyard with more amphitheaters, seating, etc. Someone who lives in the area can get used to the place, but to someone who has never seen it (or in my case, has seen it after a long time) it’s beautiful.

The place has become more of a lovers’ joint rather than a tourist attraction, though. I can understand. Despite the experience of being there, the idea of a rock garden sounds unappealing to a tourist. However, if you’re a resident and you’ve been there before, you know all the high walls and small crevices in the caves form this intimate experience that’s difficult to actually get in India. You can actually sit somewhere and look at a waterfall, and be alone. There’s also sculptures of monkeys. I can see sexy times.

Today we went to a gurdwara which is supposed to hold special significance. Gurdwara literally means “Guru” (Guru) “Dwara” (Place of Residence). The Sikh religion / way of life was established around the period of Mughal rule. Guru Govind Singh’s family were killed at the place which is now the gurdwara by being burnt alive, because they refused to become muslim. Apparently it’s really interesting to go “downstairs”, but because I didn’t know there was a “downstairs” I didn’t go. The pictures are really to show what a gurdwara is like in general, as opposed to the story I just discussed specifically.

This is a very large gurdwara. In the Gurdwara you are supposed to walk around barefoot, and decent Gurdwaras have a little water thing where you clean your feet before you enter (and clean them before you leave, in case it’s dusty). This Gurdwara is massive, though, and the “barefoot walking area” is gigantic. They actually have little walking paths so that you burn burn or freeze your feet (marble floors and the sun / lack of sun). Outside, I would expect Langar) to take place. Inside the actual prayer room itself (which is remarkably small) you’re supposed to walk in, donate some money, get your mattha taken (which means bowing your head to the ground), do a “satstriakal” and sit down. Boys and girls sit on opposite sides of the room, from where they apparently perv on each other.

The guy in front of the room reads from the “Guru Granth Sahib”, which is the name of the holy book (“Sahib” means “Mr” though, so I don’t get why a book is called that). There’s a procedure of saying stuff and doing things by which the book is opened and closed, and it takes a while. There’s also some way of getting to the passage which will be read. Both the procedure and the text itself is impenetrable. Most punjabis I’ve talked to don’t know what’s being read, not to mention myself, who has a decent hold on Hindi but even pindi (village) punjabis confuse me.

The speaking itself is sort of melodic (like the reading of the koran?) and for some bits the guy out-and-out starts singing. There’s also a music trio consisting of two singers who also have harmoniums, and a tabla player who occasionally also sings. From my experience thus far all the tabla players look identical, like that nurse in Pokemon. The music trio sing songs of praise, and occasionally gets their lyrics from passages in the Guru Granth Sahib.

After visiting the Gurdwara, we went to “Aam Khas Bagh”. Literally translated, this is “Common Special Fort” (I think). It means a place for everyone. It has some unique design features and the thing works as a mini society unto itself. It has farming areas, gardens, water features, and a bunch of other things. It also has plumbing which doubles as air conditioning. The water running through the holes in the building runs throughout the entire building, cooling it. It also goes into baths, which can be used for taking baths as well as providing additional cooling.

According to my dad, the boys building was separate to the girls’ building. This may have lead to interesting times. The fort also contained a well which was operated by an animal walking around in circles. The well is gigantic, and comes complete with a little spiral staircase thingy so people can go down it. It’s also very deep, and would’ve contained the necessary water to sustain the entire fort.

Today was Anu’s wedding, Day 1. The wedding goes for two days (on and off). The first party is the “wedding” part, which takes place during the morning through the day. This is organised by the girls’ family. The second party is the “reception” part, which takes place the next night, and is organised by the boys’ family.

The wedding part starts with people gathering at a hall or equivalent place, where there’s food, music, and other fun things. The music had way too much bass. This is worse than Leb bass, it was freaking ridiculous. A lot of people in India have this whole way too much bass thing. When you complain they calmly explain it’s “because they have this thing called a sub-woofer”. Nice.

OK after the pre-wedding reception bit we head to the Gurdwara, where the wedding will actually take place. The wedding was a Punjabi wedding as opposed to a Hindu wedding, so the process was a bit different. We basically sat there with the bridal party sitting at the front. Then they (and us in some places) had to bow their heads to the ground.

As per the normal Gurdwara fare, we sometimes had to say waheguru ji ki fateh, as well as satsriakal. Then the couple walked around the pedestal four times, pausing in between for the guys to say some things. Unlike Hindu weddings, instead of tying the guy’s sash to the girl’s sash, the girl simply holds the guy’s sash. I like the symbolism of this a lot more. It feels more voluntary. Being the girl’s cousins, we stood around “supporting” her as she walked around.

Afterwards, we went back to the reception area and had some food. I was on the prowl for Golgappas. This is pretty much the reason I’m in India. I was holding off on them because I may have gotten very sick from the stuff you can readily get on the streets. Because this was at a wedding, I expected the quality to be a bit better.

They had no Gol Gappas. I was mortified. The rest of the day was a blur as I thought about my time here, about how we spent our whole time here getting 90% of the way to doing something, and not getting it done. Curse this crap. Luckily, my older cousin sister was there, and she’s pretty awesome. After the wedding, and some tea, we went out for some Gol Gappa at a reasonable joint near where we lived.

Worth it.

Today we went to Anu’s parents house to get Henna tattoos. It is a tradition (among women) to do this before one of them gets married. Here I will reveal some interesting facts about henna tattoos.

Before they apply the henna to your skin, they put a bit of oil on it. There’s also “things” you can do which will make the henna darker. For some reason the henna turns out much more vivid on the palm of your hand than on other parts (even the back of the hand). This might be oil related. Some people have skin which will naturally make the henna darker. Applying more henna will also make it darker (at least, there are techniques unrelated to your body which will make the henna more vivid).

Watching women getting henna applied is great for photos, because they pretty much don’t move the entire time. People move around a whole lot normally, so a moment in a picture is seriously something that exists for less than half a second. Serendipity is required to get the right shot. With Henna tattoos, everyone is effectively a statue until the Henna dries.

As the henna tattoo dries it will get darker. The same thing happens on the pattern left on your skin. It starts off bright red and eventually darkens to black, then fades. Before it dries, henna is basically a paste. If it touches anything, it will stain. If you move, say, your finger, the henna will move about a bit, which will ruin the pattern.

The end result is a bunch of women sitting in a room, chatting, and trying not to move. For Anu, the wife-to-be, she not only has to keep her hand still, but also her arms, her feet, and her legs. She was getting sore, and would have gotten cramps if she didn’t move a little bit. She basically looked like a mummy the entire time. Because the Henna is on your extremeties, you can’t do anything other than talk.

This leads to some fun times, as people undergo various contortions to do every-day activities, like drinking. Anu was completely helpless, and needed someone else to do almost everything for her, including moving pieces of plastic around so she wouldn’t stain the sofas or ground. The Tattoo artists were a bit crap, and were watching the clock more than what they were doing. Ultimately, I’d have preferred they charge more and work on their customer service.

Before removing the henna, a bit of lemon water syrup thing is applied to the skin, and left for a little while. The immediate result is a little bit, or very, red coloured skin on the places where henna was applied. Within a day, these will become dark, almost black.

Today was a cleaning ritual… thing for the wedding of my cousin, Anu. Ordinarily, there would be much rubbing of insert eleven secret herbs and spices here on Anu’s skin so make her more fetching. However, as we are into the 21st century (and loving it) she went to a beauty salon (man is that what they’re called? I don’t know I’m a guy), so there was a customary smearing of maybe one or two herbs on her face and legs, taking care not to ruin the good work of the salon peeps.

There were also some ritual bits, including having my female relatives repeatedly doing the “heads and shoulders, knees and toes” dance on Anu, then feeding her. It has sunk in that the Punjabi religion’s rituals all consist of:

1. Do religious activity
2. Eat something.

This works well as positive re-inforcement.

Anyway, the final bit was great, which was Anu’s mum (my Chachiji) taking the Atta (flour) and Haldi, and putting hand prints on the wall. This was basically a good day for photo taking, and that part looked awesome and colourful, if a little gross.

At night we went to the Ladies Sangeet. Ordinarily this means a bunch of women get together with Anu and sing some very old traditional songs about marriage and stuff. There’s also much giggling (I’ve never really understood). However, as we are into the 21st Century (and… WTF?) we went to a gay night club and listened to hard-core techno? OK so we got there and I wasn’t very sure about this. Like I said the look and feel of the place, as well as the music being played said “gay night club” (knowledge from a sample size of 1).

Instead of gay people, though, the place was full of my relatives (some of them quite old and married). Eventually the music turned to be Bhangra, and there were waiters handing out hors’dourves. There was proper food at the… umm… arse end of the place. Eventually the traditional ladies sangeet took place on the checkerboard walls among laser lights. It was truly… something.

We visited my eldest Buaji today. Including my Bhabhiji’s family, this makes two musical families I’ve met so far. Unlike my Bhabhijis family, there’s actual musical instruments at the house, and some kids (specifically my nephews) willing to play it. The kids are all incredibly intelligent, as well as generally adorable. The youngest talks a lot, but it’s always so sweet I want to hug her. The middle child can play a bunch of instruments and has quite a bit of in depth knowledge about the instruments as well as music in general. For us, he played some xylophone, sitar, tabla, and a violin-like instrument whose name escapes me. My brother was obviously very interested, and tried his hand at the Sitar and Tabla.

The Sitar is an interesting instrument. There are 5 strings, plus another 12 (or so?). The “extra” strings are sitting right on the neck, and cannot be plucked directly. Rather, they will resonate when similar frequencies are played on other strings. Four of the 5 strings are also supposed to be plucked open (unless this is only very basic playing of the sitar). This leaves only one string on which you effectively “solo”. The index finger is used on all the major notes, and a good vibrato is very important. This makes it similar, but very distinct to the guitar. The strings and frets are also elevated, which appears to hurt more when playing. Even my brother, with calloused fingers from years of guitar playing, said it hurt to play the sitar.

The tabla is another nice instrument. It’s capable of making a fairly diverse set of sounds. Indian music is very structured, which kind of pins things down a little bit. My brother sucked at the tabla, and wasn’t able to get the “tha” sound out properly. In a way, the tabla is a fairly easy instrument to play. You just whack it and it sounds awesome. Playing it well is another matter, but people should be able to get joy from it fairly quickly (I mean, people already tap their fingers to the beat, and a tabla is effectively a beat instrument which works from the fingers).

My brother and nephew “jammed” with a guitar (which my brother claims was bahot bura) and the tabla. It sounded kind of ridiculous (like “world music”) but overall wasn’t too bad. I wished we could’ve videotaped it so I could’ve added really cheesy effects and uploaded it onto the internet titled “The 60s are back!”

News channels and chatter is pretty much about the Obama win. It’s interesting that a country can have so much world sway that news about the new president is more important than local matters. There’s tons of random Obama related news just popping up for no reason. What it means for people of different races, what it means for India in various aspects, etc. I don’t really care. He can kiss my Obam-ass.

Later, at the white house: And then I said “WELL YOU CAN KISS MY BARACK-SIDE!!!”

We finally arrive back in Chandigarh, after a 30 hour train journey and a one hour drive. We’re wasted, we paid about $100 more than we should have, there were cockroaches, and I’ve now got a sore throat. And I didn’t get any sleep. Despite getting to sleep at 4 in the morning, I still woke up just before the afternoon and we went window shopping. There’s so much stuff to buy here it’s awesome. I was already making plans for what I was going to get you guys. Both my parents and my brother suggested I buy it another day. Not really sure why, but I complied.

Their whole attitude of “doing stuff later” is starting to bug me. I want to do stuff now. Despite telling me not to buy anything, I bought a pair of shoes for myself, and my brother bought a pair of shoes, DVDs, CDs, and games for himself. I have no idea how he’s going to fit any of it in his luggage.

I can’t really say more, because that would give away the surprise of what I want to get you guys. Maybe it’ll be nothing due to time running out :(.

This morning we went to visit the dam. This is a place we go to every time we go to Jamshedpur, but it’s not really that much fun. The first time we there we went on a boat and took it around. That was good, but each time since we haven’t been able to do this. Today the boats weren’t out. We basically walked around the dam, which in and of itself was not a bad thing, it just wasn’t that great. The day was also not pleasant. I wouldn’t call it a hot day, even though everyone else was complaining, but it didn’t have a cool breeze to make it good enough to just walk around.

We also went to visit my Taiji’s sister. Every time we go to visit a new relative my brain goes “oh damn, not another relative. This is going to be so boring”. Luckily, I’m always pleasantly surprised. We had a great time, and I wanted to spend more time there, but we had to get going. The really great thing was that even the older folks were very on-the-ball, which was great to see. The whole family is really smart.

Nitu (my cousin) had to head back to Mumbai (or around there anyway). We went to the train station to send her off. Before we did this we decided to visit Jubilee Park. This was a mistake. Imagine a park with so much smog that the visibility is low as fuck. Determined, we walked around for a bit (well, I was determined, everyone else wanted to head back). Eventually we gave up. I would have a sore throat next morning.

The train was an hour or so late. This is ordinary fare in India, it seems. We talked a lot of shit, hugged, and left. My hatred for trains really began here.

A cousin’s “boyfriend’s family” is coming over to visit. There’s apparently a ceremony of sorts to mark the occasion, and there are many gifts. It’s also that cousin’s birthday. Another one of my cousins has also come over for the occasion. “Cousin” is sort of used as a bad word in Australia sometimes, but I’ve been having a ball with my cousins, whether it’s D&M chats at 2am or just talking crap… also at 2am. It’s good to have other people in my age bracket to talk to on this trip where most of the people I meet are my parents’ age.

As it turns out, a theory I’ve had for a while seems to be holding up – the culture gap between generations is greater than the culture gap between countries (at least, in modern times). It felt rather special when one of my cousins turned on Metallica’s “Nothing else matters” and said it’s one of her favourite songs, as well as certain movies which she claimed “described her life” because she was in a band when she was younger.

I took a lot of pictures during the day, which weren’t just for me this time. After showing the family, they think I’m becoming a good photographer. This is a promising sign. It’d be nice to win a competition or something. Honestly though, it’s the massive F-Stop on my 50mm lens which does all the work. It’s still hard to do all the social stuff to get people interested in getting a picture taken, but I’m getting some practise there.

During the evening we went to a club. Not a dance club, rather a club with members which has a bunch of amenities, including tennis courts, a swimming pool, restaurants, bars, a movie theater, etc. Jamshedpur is like Wollongong in Australia, in that it’s main industry is steel, and one company (Tata in Jamshedpur, BHP in Wollongong) pretty much runs the town. Tata has gone so far as to build a bunch of infrastructure for the place, including parks and stuff. This club is owned by them. It feels like a creepy “companies as governments” things, but there’s good ice cream and that eases the mind.

The club’s bowling alley was closed for some reason, as was the pool. India is beginning to disappoint me in the way things are done around here. It’s like a procrastinating high school student. It doesn’t help that my parents do things at snail’s pace, and the only thing on their mind is food and sleep. My mum just woke up and told me she “had a lot of fun” because she “slept for so long”.

Having said that, I had a rather good time just hanging around at a cafe (real coffee!) just chatting with my brother and one of my cousins.