This is for anybody who’s interested in sharing my view of general services providers in the UK, ‘though I’m specifically referring to H3G based on my personal experiences with them.
When I see advertisements in London, I laugh. Cynical laughter. Promising service, reliability, ‘a better product’ than the next competitor, based on a survey which has returned a 99% approval figure! A study of the fine print (literally named because it’s normally very tiny and situated in a corner) reveals that the so-called survey is an opinion poll from some anonymous happy current customers. Hah! I maintain, a lot of these activities would surely fall under the criminal code ‘419′ back in my country.
My submission; the H3G mobile broadband service is cr*p, sh*t and absolutely fraudulent. My first month with them produced a broadband package of 3gb of data to be used over 33 days (incredible, but true!), their billing system somehow can calculate a month as 33 days, they also somehow managed to sneak in an extra data usage of 170mb, calculated at a convenient cost of 10p per mb.
This is London; the ‘rip-off capital of the world, or the city that hosts the biggest ‘rip-off’ companies in the world. I call it the way I see it. Nuff said.
In pure scientific terms (or otherwise actually) the term ‘forever‘ is definitely a gross misnomer. Infinity is a much more preferrable (and aesthetically correct, if I might add!) choice. See, infinity provides a much needed open ended space which can be utilised to such wonderfully creative purposes as; making quantum leaps to arrive at conclusions, terminating unwanted debates (most common use) and introducing a veritable plethora of related (quite a few unrelated concepts also) ideas to link up with your original views.
Let’s look at this in practice; why say something lasts forever? Diamond, in pure technical terms lasts a pretty long time - some ridiculously large number of years - but the fact remains that all things decompose/disintegrate in the end. It’s the relatively long amount of time (compared to the paltry life-span of basic organic items, of which man is the most prominent) that gives rise to the idea of ‘permanence‘ or everlasting nature of certain minerals, diamonds included.
Anyway, before I digress too much, this post is kinda related to one of my earlier rambles where I was talking about “laughing too/and no one would suspect/…“. The part of that talk that has me going off now is the idea of politicians in particular becoming so caught up in spin that self-delusion becomes a ‘clear and present danger’, the norm rather than the exception.
NOTHING lasts forever.
But…, of course, people forget this daily. I’ve been listening to some music and I’d like to share a few lines with y’all. First off, Lauryn Hill: “you can get the money/you can get the power/’keep your mind on/the final hour…“, the other view is from reggae music, Chezidek: ”on your way up/make sure you find a way how/on your way down/there will be no helping hands around…/climb up to the skies/but you can’t stay up the air/don’t care how you bad boy/ cannot walk inna thin air/must come backa earth/’say you haffi touch ground again/…“
For all those leaders out there who feel they will last forever; the world existed before us, it will be here after us, no matter the attempts of guys like Mr Bu**sh*t out there to take the whole place into a hole with him. Nuff said.
Kanu is the type of person that makes me proud to support my country, look up the after game footage from the FA Cup at Wembley and check the sweat shirt he had on, this is the message on it: ‘I love Nigeria’.
There’s a word we use to describe it; ‘amorosis‘, otherwise known as ‘Chess blindness’ or ‘parallax‘ in some scientific circles . Painful as the game below was for Mr Bacrot, at least us patzers have hope in Chess when we see that even the super GM’s are capable of the occassional blunder. I just had to put up the picture from the final position, it’s Black to move after Qe7+. (apologies Etienne).
From yesterdays news round-up column in theLondonPaper:
Cop Baton Death Claim
A police suspect died in mysterious circumstances hours after being hit by batons while being arrested, an inquest heard today. Oyinloye Awogboro, 23, of Surrey Quays, died in hospital on Sunday night just 12 hours after he was arrested for driving through two red lights in north London. Coroners added that officers “deployed” batons and CS gas when they caught him after a short chase on foot. After falling ill at Islington police station, Awogboro was taken to University College Hospital, where he died. The hearing was adjourned until 8 July.
You know, I have to ask two questions; 1. is there a Nigerian Ambassador in the UK? 2. how come we keep on hearing of Nigerians in London being killed through police action (albeit in small newspaper columns) while youths in this place kill people with knives, bats and such weapons then get let off with a talking to?
The girl had it all planned perfectly. Get married to the octogenarian millionaire and screw him out of his fortune (literally). Everything was on course, the marriage was about to be consumated on the wedding night in the penthouse suite of the exclusive hotel when the old man suddenly brought out a set of nose and ear plugs. And what are those for ?, she asked. There’re two things I can’t stand, he replied; screaming and the smell of burning rubber.
And this neat one: The 75yr old man was about to get married to a nubile teenager so he decided to visit his Doctor for a quick checkup. After the examination, the Doctor said to him; you know, at your age, getting married to a teenager can lead to a sudden death. Looking the Doctor straight in the eye he replied; if she dies, she dies.
And that’s the way my main man put it. 2Pac. Makaveli. Whatever name you decide to remember him by. The line comes from the ‘Don Kiluminati’ album, track 13 actually; against all odds.
Now isn’t that just absolutely the best way to leave this lovely world behind? I’m not talking about the violence (perceived or otherwise) that surrounded this poet’s troubled 25 yr existence; I’m talking about his lyrics, his music that still lives on today. Whatever anyone says about Tupac Shakur’s life, I think there is a majority consensus that he was ‘the realest’.
I guess this kind of addresses the previous post. For some people, the rewards of short term satisfaction are insufficient to compensate for the overall fulfilment derivable from being a true citizen of the world. ‘True Citizens’ here being interpreted to mean people who say things as they see them. Fela Kuti. Tupac Shakur. Bob Marley. The list is endless.
Ask yourself; are you a true citizen? When push comes to shove, will you speak up and call things the way you really see them? Food for thought.
As the ’silicon monster’ (Fritz) sings: “I was laughing too/and no one would suspect/I’m a fraud!”
The backbencher mentality. The chimera people, or like someone said of the mythological god Janus: “two faces, and neither one of them true”. You know, it’s easy to get into this kind of frame of mind but somehow I think the people that do get sucked into this sort of ‘fraudulent personae’ find it just about impossible to accept the truth of their predicament. Try talking to a person who is immersed in politics about the dangers of presenting ‘truth the way it is required for the moment’ on their long term ability to differentiate reality from ’spin’. A brick wall every time.
The other day I wandered into a dj affair in some place somewhere. Now, I went into the room with a clear picture of what I was looking for; a few drinks, some atmosphere and essentially to admire any of the ‘beautiful people’ that might be on show. As I chilled out in a corner (my standard location in party, pub, class, etc ), sipping my drink and observing the scene, I started to feel out of place. Everybody was into the ‘rave’ feeling; the dj was banging out some massive tunes and people were just flowing to the beat, moving to the rhythm. So, I decided to adopt the ‘tried and tested’ si fueris romae vivito romano more and accordingly moved out of my corner to join in the revelry. After a few minutes I had to ask myself; was I getting caught up? Yes, “I was laughing too…” but was I laughing too hard?
At the end of the day I guess there are always very thin/fine lines between the edges of reason in the various actions and forays we undertake in our daily existence. The difficulty is in being able to carry out an objective personal assessment as to which side of reason we are on at any particular time.
Customer service; is this term a myth? Does it really exist? It’s definitely debatable if I examine my experiences here in the ‘rip-off’ capital of the world, the wonderful city of London. A place where sharks, remora, vampires, leeches, piranha, fungi, tumours and all sorts of unsightly parasitic and symbiotic spectres float around every instant of every waking moment (and in dreams sometimes!), looking for innocent (well, some are anyway…) souls to devour.
Proposing all sorts of ‘business’ (in my country a lot of these business deals/contracts would be listed under ‘section 419’ of the criminal code). Finding ever resourceful ways to tie you into bloodsucking contracts; mobile phone deals, broadband deals, mortgages, ‘easy’ interest ‘long term’ loans are amongst their favourite schemes of entrapment.And the fabled wall of defence these parasites hide behind? “Customer Services”, an army of well trained robots schooled in the art of linguistic delivery of industry clichés like ‘mission statements’, ‘fair deals’, ‘looking into and resolving your complaints shortly’ etc. As soon as you discover the veritable plethora of ‘hidden charges’ and ‘disclaimers of any misquoted contract terms’ (normally hidden in small print), the robot army steps in to block you from launching an assault on these bloodsucking vampires.
I’m currently embroiled in a bitter argument with mobile broadband provider ‘Hutchison 3G’ over misrepresentation of contract terms, a dispute over ‘appropriate’ data tracking software and an issue of what I perceive as an attempt to extort money from a customer (me) by underhand means. Of course I have been blocked by the robot army at all turns so far (I think I’ve spent approx two - three hours talking to ‘customer services’ so far on the phone).
Ok, let me attempt to at least look at the option that these ‘Customer Service’ people get so many ‘crank calls’ daily that they sometimes lose patience and rather than examine each customer complaint on its individual merit, decide to group everybody into the ‘freeloader’ category. My answer to this; the customer is the lifeblood of any business. If you cannot take the time to discover and resolve customer complaints then there is no reason for you to be in business. At the end of the day, my question remains; why these underhand methods of stonewalling?
As a consumer of goods and services I am perfectly willing to take responsibility for my choices; all I ask is for those choices to be stated clearly and legibly.
. Painful as the game below was for Mr Bacrot, at least us patzers have hope in Chess when we see that even the super GM’s are capable of the occassional blunder. I just had to put up the picture from the final position, it’s Black to move after Qe7+. (apologies Etienne).
