Posts in "Moans"

Moans

Would You Just Sit Down!

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Part of being a grumpy young man is the ability to find something to annoy you in every conceivable situation. The situation that has been getting on my nerves recently is people’s Neanderthal like behaviour the moment they step on to an aircraft.

It first really came to my attention when I took low cost airlines around India (which, if you were to compare them to the no-frills crap we have in England is like a 5 star luxury travel experience). India is quite renowned as a nation of people who don’t follow the rules. This is quite understandable because if you tried to follow the rules, you’d never get anything done. However, it becomes particularly apparent on a low cost airline.

So yes, I thought it was specific to India, people’s behaviour on planes, but after taking some crap no-frills airlines while back in England, I’ve been forced to reconsider this opinion.

Mobile Phones

This is my biggest annoyance. Everyone knows that they ask you to turn your phone off when you are on the plane, yet people insist on walking on to the plane on the phone, sending text messages, shooting off emails on their blackberry etc.

On the flight back to Chennai the guy next to me was sending messages all through the announcement about turning off your phone, it was done in English, Hindi and Tamil so he had no excuse other than being a knuckleheaded buffoon.

I understand that 99% of the time, use of your mobile phone has no bearing on the performance of the plane, but I have read stories whereby the pilot has been unable to communicate with the tower because of the buzzing interference of a mobile phone. Maybe I’ll get my pilot friend to comment further on this matter.

Anyway, the point is, I’m sure if everyone used their phone, there could well be some problems, you are not special, particularly if you are sitting in cattle class with me, so don’t be an ejit and use your phone.

But it gets worse, the moment the plane touches down, people nowadays seem to be so addicted to their mobiles to which one can probably draw comparisons with smokers and the urge to have a cigarette, because the plane is still on the runway and they pull out their mobile to check for messages! No one loves you anyway, so save it till you get in to the terminal. Oh and if you do get a message, don’t kid yourself, it’s only the local network welcoming you to the country.

Seat Recliners

Oh, this annoys me nearly as much as mobile phones do. The people who make use of the seat recliners are the sort who have no consideration and nothing but contempt for another human being. You can pick out the self-centered bastards of the world by those that choose to use the recliner, thus inconveniencing the person behind you who suddenly has an LCD TV shoved in to their face and even less room to move around in.

But what gets me more is that on every single bloody flight, the attendants ask you to put your seat in the upright position. So what’s the first thing these inconsiderate morons do when they board the plane? Recline their seat, I mean, what in God’s green Earth are they thinking? Anyone who’s been on a flight knows the seat has to be upright for take off, why tell everyone you’re an ignorant waste of space right from the start?

Again, I’ve been on a plane which is still on the ground and a cabin crew have asked someone to put their seat forward and not a few minutes later, they recline it again. What makes them think they are more special than someone else, other than winning the most inconsiderate award.

In my somewhat lopsided view, when I looked around the plane virtually everyone had their seats fully reclined, those that didn’t were mostly westerners. When I challenged some Indian friends on this, they replied that they recline their seat because they can, it hadn’t even occurred to them that it could possibly inconvenience the person behind them – something (not considering others) which I think is pervasive throughout Indian society simply because the sheer number of people forces you to do so.

So next time you are on a flight, don’t be an arsehole, leave your seat upright. If you want to sleep, stop being a cheapskate and upgrade to a class that lets you stretch out fully, don’t inflict your pig headedness on others just because you are too tight to pay for a better seat.

Seatbelts

Does personal safety mean anything to anyone? Then why do the cabin crew have to come around and ask you to put your seatbelt on before take off?!

There must be some kind of psychological problem with some people, they have no fear of death but an irrational fear of being restrained or something because they don’t like wearing that seatbelt!

It’s like, as soon as the plane touches down, you hear the click of people removing their seatbelt and almost letting out a sigh of relief, as if they can finally breathe now the restraining belt can be removed.

And if that’s not enough, on flights in India, people are actually standing up before the plane has left the runway – leaving the poor cabin crew to beg and plead with people to sit back down!

Safety Notice

Yes, I know that by now we all know where the doors are located on a plane and that the life jacket is located under the seat and in the event of an emergency we’ll all scream, panic and possibly do something involuntary but even so, keep quiet during the safety instructions!

This was a huge problem on the European flights, the safety notice began and people carried on talking, raising their voices to be heard over the PA system! Eventually the cabin crew had to ask everyone to be silent and started all over again. I’ve noticed on the internal Indian flights the passengers do give the cabin crew their full attention, although I feel this may have more to do with the fact that they are slim and very pretty rather than male, like in England!

I mean come on, would it actually kill you to be quiet for a few minutes while the cabin crew give some instructions which may save your life?

Toilets!

Bloody hell this annoys me. Why does it take some people 10 minutes to go to the toilet on a plane?! Especially when they can see a queue of people outside.

I think airlines should start charging for use of the toilet, your first 2 minutes is free, after that it is a £1 / $1 per minute. No one should be taking more than 5 minutes anyway! Not unless they are in the process of joining a certain exclusive club.

If you have an aisle seat, don’t complain when people get up!

In the day and age where you get to select your seat before you board, or in the case of the low-but-hidden-charges cost airlines a free for all once you get on the plane, if you choose an aisle seat, don’t complain when someone gets up to go to the toilet or has to wake you to get out!

On the way back to India, I saw one middle aged totally ignorant gentleman refuse to move to allow a lady (who was about 80) get out – the knucklehead of a man made her climb over and had the audacity to look put out by this!

The guy wasn’t the smallest and there was another bulky guy sitting next to him who also tried to get out, the comedy of seeing two fat guys trying to squeeze past each other, one stubbornly refusing to get up and the other trying to get through, it just made him look utterly ridiculous, I almost felt like saying to him, “what the hell, move you fool!”

So I don’t know what it is about air travel that makes people lose all sense of etiquette and consideration for others, maybe the irrational fear of flying overrides all other emotions and actions of people and turns them in to little balls of selfishness with not a thought for their fellow passenger.

What annoys you about air travel?!

Moans

Home of the Ridiculous

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So here I am, back home. Back in England and back to Western culture. India is wonderful of course, but there’s only so long you can go before you start craving the Western vices (like beef burgers). Last year I managed 12 months, this year I didn’t do so well and had to come back after just 10 months.

Well, I say had to come back, the words of my father are still echoing in my ears “son, if you don’t come back for your mothers beep birthday, you may as well not come back for Christmas.” No one ever even mentioned the word ‘threat’.

So I have come from one country which by all accounts is utterly random to another country which I firmly believe has lost its marbles.

Anyway. The first thing you notice moments after walking through arrivals is how stupidly expensive everything is here. When you are used to paying £3.50 for an excellent two course meal, coming to England is like diving in to a pool of ice; you become numb with shock.

In my first day back in England, I got the train from Heathrow Terminal 5 (which is amazing by the way, even my Dad, the man that could find fault with the Sistine Chapel begrudgingly conceded that they had done a fair job with T5) to South London which cost £10.

From there I went and had a pint (from landing to first pint in 90 minutes is not bad going) which cost £3 and then it was off to buy a Pay As You Go sim card, (topped up with £20 – enough to last you three months in India) and some toiletries.

Three hours in the country and the total cost so far was £35.

That evening, I went to a pub to meet up with some old uni friends where we had dinner and many drinks. Dinner was £9 and drinks came in at around £15. By the time I got to bed I’d managed to spend nearly £60 since landing.

The next day I went and had my first McDonald’s (you honestly don’t realize how much you miss Quarter Pounders until it’s no longer available!) before catching a train up to my hometown.

Now in India, you can travel the length and breadth of the country for about a £20. This will get you a nice air-conditioned carriage with a full length bed since the train journeys can last for days (and not because the train gets lost like in Darjeeling Limited!).

England, on the other hand, seems to think that everyone is as rich as Mr. Monopoly, so a basic 1 hour train journey costs £39 if you want a single or £41 if you want a return – simply proving that someone, somewhere failed their maths GCSE.

Having been in the country less than 24 hours, I’d managed to spend a grand total of £100 (and a bit more). Utterly ridiculous, I hadn’t even gone very far or bought anything of any value, simply ate to stay alive and took public transport to get from A to B.

Back in my adopted country (which doesn’t want me back), £100 lasts you a month! And you get to live like a King!

But rip-off Britain gets worse – and for any Brits reading this, you don’t know how bad it is until you go to other countries – once back home, I had to get a hair cut which ended up costing £8.80 for a quick buzz round the back and sides and cut short on top. Admittedly, there were no hair raising experiences (pun intended) this time, but honestly, £8.80 for a haircut! We’re in the middle of the worst recession since the 1930’s, people can’t afford to go around spending £8.80 for a bit of cranial topiary!

The world has gone mad. And Britain has become ridiculous.

Oh. And it’s still bloody raining here!

Moans

Things That Make You Go ARAGH!

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Today has been a very frustrating day. The God of Karma has been saving up all my bad luck from the 14th August and rained it down on me all day. They say things come in threes, and I wouldn’t want to disapoint an old cliche with my own series of three unfortunate events.

(I do find it a little odd that both this post and my previous one talk about bad luck, but hey ho, that’s the way the cookie crumbles)

The first happened early this afternoon. I went to a friends house and she was complaining about the internet password used by her former housemates. Without going in to too many details, it was sick, wrong and twisted. No problem I said, I’m a guy (of the deadly hunter-gatherer variety), we enjoy fixing things for women.

Changing the password for your wireless internet is a job of about 30 seconds, access the router (duh! By going to http://192.168.0.1 stupid!) update the password, click save then update the passwords on the computers accessing the wireless network. No biggie, I’ve done it loads of times before on other routers.

Except this time, sods law caught up with me and what should have been a 30 second job turned into 2 hours of frustrating, hair pulling, pleading and bargaining time spent trying to get the damn computers to work. My friend was convinced I’d broken her internet, but it’s not supposed to work like that, it’s just damn unlucky that the moment you mess around with someone elses computer to ‘fix’ it, everything goes wrong.

After wasting two hours of my time, I did eventually fix it, but the lesson was learned, never offer to fix anyone elses computer. Even if it’s for a girl.

The second round of bad luck came early this evening. I invited a Kenyan expat over to watch the Man U v Arsenal match and we decided to order a take away. Calling up, I was unconvinced that they understood the order. Regardless, we opened a couple of beers and settled down to watch the game.

A couple of hours later, it was apparent that no food was going to turn up, so we got an Indian friend to call up the place. Typically, they had no record of our order, so we went ahead and tried to place it again, the conversation went something like this.

Friend: “We want 3 chicken rolls and a mutton biriyani. M-U-T-T-O-N. Oh, no mutton, umm, ok, fine, chicken biriyani.”

A few minutes later we get a phone call.

Friend: “oh, no chicken biriyani either. Fine, we’ll just have 5 chicken rolls. OK? Good”

I should point out that this is a very regular occurance in restaurants in Chennai, it’s really not uncommon to have the waiter come back to you after placing the order and tell you that that dish or drink is not available. A classic case is illustated in one my previous posts about my quest to get some idlies. Anyway, you can’t get stressed about it, it’s just TII 🙂

Eagerly expecting our food, the phone rang again a few minutes later…

Friend: “What? No chicken rolls? OK, what about paneer rolls? OK, fine. No paneer rolls. This is a take away restaurant you are trying to run here, right? You’re not moonlighting as a stationary shop or something? What? Oh never mind. No, we don’t want anything else, cancel the order. No, we don’t want to order anything…No, we don’t want the paneer rolls because you said you didn’t have any! Sorry, am I talking to a chimpanzee?”

Sidenote: Anyone searching for information on Tandoori Wala in Chennai, avoid at all costs! They don’t speak English or Tamil (we were lucky we had a Hindi speaking friend), they don’t take down your orders and they never have any of the food on their menu! What kind of mickey mouse restaurant is this? On top of that, the prices are at least double what you would pay else where.

So another lesson was learned today. Tandoori Wala in Chennai should be avoided like the plague.

By this point the God of Karma was having a field day and looking down on me in glee as I carried on watching the match, albeit very very hungry. Still, I had my beer, right? Well, so I thought…

The final round of bad luck came during the game. In what can only be described as a freak series of unfortunate events, the way everthing came together at the right moment to create utter destruction verged on the poetic.

First off, we were watching the Man U v Arsenal match. It was the second half and I went to the fridge to pour a couple more cold beers. As I stood behind my friend to hand him his beer, Arsenal decided at that exact moment to have a very close shot on goal and my friend threw back his arms, knocking the beer flying across the room and smashing against my baby laptop (my wonderful Asus eeePC 🙁 ) spilling beer all across the floor and all over my keyboard.

Without thinking, I carefully (even your unconscious mind cares about beer) put the other beer glass down by the chair I was sitting in (which was on the other side of the room) and scampered over to my netbook which was making a worrying crackling noise. Meanwhile my friend also leapt in to action and rushed to get a mop and bucket to clean it all up. As I was tending to my netbook, he shoved my seat out of the way, sending the other beer glass flying and giving about half a dozen shoes a proper beer shampoo.

I learned my final lesson of the day (and hey, every day is a school day, right?): don’t invite Kenyan expats round to eat, watch football and drink beer!

The rest of this post is only for uber-computer geeks. Normal people can stop reading now.

(seriously, unless you actually own a minimum of two computers and have a computer parts graveyard somewhere in your (moms) house, don’t even bother continuing)

After spilling beer on my precious baby laptop, many of the keys became stuck / stopped working, for example the Num Lock key was permanently on with no way to switch it off (which rendered the U, I, O keys useless unless I planned to do lots of spreadsheets) and so was the F1 key, so every programme I opened up, it kept opening the help pages and would go in to a loop of “help automatically opens” => “manually close help” => “help automatically opens” => “manually close help” (you get the idea).

So I did some research and found that you can manually remap (change / swap) keys on your keyboard. I downloaded a free program called KeyTweak and was able to disable both the Num Lock and F1 keys, making my keyboard usable again. This is probably very useful if you’ve spilt your drink all over your laptop keyboard and some keyboard keys have stopped working or default to the ‘on’ status.