One Bad Apple spoils the whole bunch

Ah, this is the life. Saturday after lunch of plain porridge. On my sofa, legs on the coffee table. Satellite TV on the flat screen. Doter (huh, learnt this from Shida) on the piano providing soft music.

My old Apple on my lap ... What? Yah, I did tell you my year-old Macbook Air was making a lot of noise. So, I backed up my data and sent it to the dealer (only ONE in Penang). They checked the records, "sorry, OOW". Yah, oow it is. Out of Warranty. And oow, it's going to hurt. As I suspected, the fan is all screwed up. Cost to replace? RM475!!! Wait, there's more. They tried to do mouth-to-mouth on the harddisk. Formatted it. It went nuts. Formatted one more time, OK, now can read but the experts think it will die anytime. Better change. 80 Gig. Got a bigger one? No, not for this machine. OK, how much to get a new one? RM800+. See, I told you it hurts. I told the guy at the dealer (nice guy, really) that if I had to dig into my own pocket I would be jumping up and down cursing the big Bad Apple. He smiles, knows I am indulging him, acts sympathic. What can he do? Shakes your faith in the Apple doesn't it? Oh, wait, did I tell you they can't go to any spare part shop to pick up the fan and the HDD? It's got to be ordered from Apple and will come flying in from who knows where. How long? Worst case scenario, three or four weeks. What!!!!? Well, worst case scenario. Optimistically maybe 2 weeks. Okkk, what can I do. Relax. Get a life. (Dear brother Wan Fauzy, if you are reading this, I agree, we got a life too, outside of USM).

Oh, I read about the Dell fiasco in Taiwan where tens of thousands of people ordered some 140,000 flat screen monitors for a song (ah, expensive song?), actually for like >90% discount. Dell said it was a mistake (like USM?) but the Taiwan consumer protection agency is telling Dell to honour the contract. You offer, I accept, we got a contract. Way to go Taiwan.

Oh, btw, maxis has sent me sms twice asking me to rate my last encounter with the aliens at their office (remember me telling them off asking for my wife's passport?). I have ignored them. Will see how persistent they are to "close the case". I suspect they must have an ISO9001 somewhere that requires that one tiny statistic from me.

Oh, I must congratulate Telekom Malaysia. One day I came back from office and found both phones dead. Of course it's my wife who later called up to report and enquire. The previous night my daugthers had been watching Internet TV until the wee hours. The next day, my eldest wanted to continue with Tar Chang Jing but couldn't. We thought it was just Streamyx being hopeless cloaked up again. Well, it looks like China is picking up again. There must be a lot more demand for scrap. The thieves stole our Internet. Actually, they stole the phone cables in our area. And these cables are underground. So, we were truly wireless for three days as the happy contractors replaced the cables. This is the second to happen to us, the first when we were at the old house.

Oh, why congratulate Telekoms? They promised to call my wife once the line was back. Well it came back. And my wife said she got a missed call when she was at a meeting. She thought it might have been them calling back. The next day, they called (again?) to tell my wife that everything is back online. "We know, thank you very much". Apparently they have to "close the case". OK, am slightly impressed. But, hey, can you guys make sure I get uninterrupted full pipe broadband? That would reallyyyyy impress me. I heard from my son that in Cyberjaya you could subscribe to 4 MBit broadband. But when my son's buddy went to register, they got only 1 MB; sorry no more port. What man, Multimedia Super Corridor already got traffic jam on superfast information highway?

And how did my wife call up Telekoms to report the breach? Cell phone of course. Weird isn't? Hmm, anybody heard of someone stealing a cellphone line?