Nocturnal Poïesis

That is the new album by Moby. It's been out since the 26th of June. Somehow, it tends to remind me of BT's This Binary Universe. But it has nothing to do with the music directly, both are very different and creative pieces of work by gifted musicians.

It has got more to do with the way they make me feel and the way they were made. Both albums were created by musicians who had gone back to their basics when they were making the music. It is hard to put into words how the music from both these albums make me feel but lately I have been a lot less sure of myself.

I am constantly second guessing myself and my reliable (?) unconscious has been kinda absent. Its like a huge gap somewhere just beneath the surface of my mind. It is a pretty weird feeling when you can constantly feel something but cannot put your finger on it. Everything that you have accumulated eludes you and nothing you do makes sense to you. I feel so very mechanical, typing out mindless words day after day and having no idea whatsoever about what I am heading for.

I was so sure of what was going on just a while ago but suddenly it feels like I have slipped and fallen. Fallen in to something without really realizing it. Am i really that lazy? Why do not feel like doing anything about it. There is precious little time I feel I have in which I must acomplish everything I want to do. Ultimately, what is it that really want to do?

I am no longer sure of things and suddenly things have been spiraling down to this unknown place neither dark nor lit because well, it is n my mind and I can only feel it within my mind. It is hard to be thinking that with a mind like this and a history like mine I want to take over the world.

Taking over the world, a nice ambitious thing to do, except that it has been done to death and no one really wants to hear about it. Funny cartoon characters try to do it all the time and the valiant hero stops them. people and entities in real life have tried to do it. Most have failed and some have succeeded, in their own different ways. Ultimately, nothing lasts. Almost nothing.

Somethings do last, like when they are passed down from generation to generation. They may change their forms entirely through the numerous passing ons but in essence they live on. How worth it is to live like that? Who am I trying to impress here? The rest of the world or just myself?

Okay, so I have been in the desperate need of a business phone with the whole alphabet soup of connectivity, including bluetooth and WLAN. So I was kinda eyeing the e71 and then I realized they are going to release an improved e71! Now, the e71 has had great reviews everywhere. Everyone loves it and it has topped on smart phone review lists everywhere and in general, everyone agrees that it is great and the e75 sucks.

Now I really really  reeh heeh heally need a business phone so that I can finally stop being desk bound and go out and have some fun. Then again, i'd probably be phone bound then but ah... who cares. So anyway, I take a look at the e72 and it looks great! It has everything that is great about the e71 and it adds cools stuff high speed (10.2mbps) HSDPA support, spacebar activated torchlight and even a digital compass! That last one I really love. Plus the for factor has improved, it is sleeker now.

Best this is the touch sensitive optical d-pad which makes navigation much smoother. So all in all, I am really sold on it.

Now there's only one problem with this which stops me from buying this. Too expensive? nah, it is priced okay. Too bulky? No,  it is actually quite slim? Battery life? It inherits the great battery life from e71, far cry from the e75's pathetic battery.

So tell us already!

Well... it hasn't been released yet! And I needed a phone like last week or something! :'( gotta wait a bit more...

Here's the promo video in the mean time

This has got to the be coolest electrical invention of recent times. It folds the typical UK three-pin plug into something that is just 1cm thick and this is a fused plug, mind you. Here's the video but the voice over is pretty bad. The inventor is probably Korean. Will post more details if I come by it.


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Okay, so I just finished yelling at an absolute imbecile of an officer - the DGM of broadband, BSNL. Point one - if you are in such a high position, learn to speak English, know the regional language, and do not say "I don't know" so many times to a customer. Point two - speak clearly and do not be drunk/sloshed at 6pm in the evening on a monday.

The fucktards d/c my line on the 19th of june 2009 for non payment of a bill on the that was paid on the 6th of June 2009, in cash. The fuckers were updated on the situation - yeah, their customer has to go to them tell them "Assholes, I have given you money, now give me my connection back". Then they make you do the merry-go-round on the red tape and before you know it, you have a hand full of system codes, no one knows what's going on and the fucking DGM says he does not know anything that it is in "bengalor". Now where that place is, I do not know, last time I heard we had something called "bangalore" which is now called Bengaluru. Now that my broadband is up and running, I am counting my losses.

4 days of non-connectivity - daily loss of approximately 1000-200, so total loss of about 4000-8000.

Update - while I was posting this, the DGM called me up to ask whether it has been reconnected or not. How nice of him. I thanked him and told him I am shifting to Reliance.

Any way, on top of my daily losses, to keep up my clientele, i had to use my mom's GPRS on an emergency basis, it was pasy as you go scheme, so now I have to pay about 2000 for that. So not only did I lose business but I also lost money to ensure that I do not suffer anymore losses.

In the meantime, I was surfing the net at my friend's place for mobile data plans. GPRS, EDGE, 3G, etc. I looked at Vodafone, Airte and Reliance. After half an hour, I did not find what I was looking for but I was updated on on all their partners and all their ringtones and sms services like  astrology. You tech-retards, have you heard of Web-UX? Web user experience? You are turning me off, a potential customer, who sadly has no time to go to three different customer care places just to pick up data plan charts. To show my friend what design should be like, I tried the international websites. Vodafone UK came up first. good enough. Went to it - there was everything any could need, plus entry in to the user account. And after banner ads, there was room to spare on the main page. Very pleasing experience.

On the Indian sites, the whole screen is filled, more or less, with useless shit. And nothing you want is easily accessible. The CalTel website has to be the worst designed site, but at least it is filled with useful links to things you want to know, if you can decipher the departmental code that the charts are written in. They expect normal customers to understand their inter-departmental abbreviations. Superb.

But at least I can find what I am looking for. Which is more than what I can say for the other websites. Listen, Web Devs at Reliance, Airtel and Vodafone India, you are in the communications business, you are fucking meant to communicate. So get a three year old and he/she will have a better data and click flow up and running than you ass holes have. Useless pieces of shit. Hire me, I am a copywriter and I understand a thing or two about UI design. I have to go through enough badly designed customer sites to know what can go wrong. And stop getting paid, you are definitely failing spectacularly at your job.

And to top this of, here's what an useless, brain dead client can do to you - you submit large assignment aropund mid day on friday. You get no response of whether he got it or not, nothing about whether his brain blew up at the pressure of writing one line in email. On saturday, after you've sent him a mail, he says his proofreaders don't work on weekends. Oh, and friday is a weekend on which calendar?

So you wait way past midday on monday comes his reponse, all passed except one. Why? Oh because the topic was wrong. Damn, how did you go wrong so badly? well, your client thinks it is 'partially' his side's fault. Heave forbid! Why? Oh... nothing serious... he did not clarify the topic on the list he gave you... nothing major. The topic was a dead president and the city where he was killed. Just two words. What is the actual topic? A 'MEMORIAL' to the dead president IN the city. Oh damn, you are so supposed to understand that from that topic. Mind reading, via a digital document on the internet. and what does he call this? "Could you please revise it?" Fucker, do you even know what the word "revision" means? You are asking me to write an entirely new article!

So yeah, perfect weekend and start of the week. To top of it off, private life has also gone for a salad tossing competition. Hooray for life. Oh, if you feel like venting, please feel free to comment. If you feel like you know of a reliable broadband connection in Kolkata (relaly?!), do comment. If you want to advice, ask annoying questions, get prepared to be published and trolled back. Especially if you choose to do it within the next 6 hours or so.