Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Anybody need A/C?

Chennai heat is horrible most of the time. First i thought of saving money by avoiding that. Changed my mind after a hot april end weekend. Thought of having the A/C at the earliest.

Went with my friend Jojan and Stanley and searched thru all the shops in Adyar bargaining for a best deal.. and finally we got a good deal - 15600Rs each for a samsung A/C with Nano technlogy. Me and Jojan bought a piece each, so that we can have A/C in both the two rooms in the apartment. The shop had no stock of the A/C. They said a wait period of 5 days will be there..

Waiting for the A/C, we started adjusting to the heat in Chennai.. after all Gunapriya apartment is airy! The A/C finally arrived after 10-12 days .. we decided to fix only one A/C as Jojan will soon move to a different apartment. samsung service centre people came and installed one A/C and they went.. We soon realized that A/C is not working..Its compressor is failing to run for more than 2 minutes..

We called Mohankumar who had done the installation. He came, inspected and said a capacitor is gone. But he only has installation rights, no right to make things right. We called the service centre poeple again.. after multiple calls and days, somebosy turned. They said compressor is faulty. They cannot do anything, we have to call samsung people.

Our fight with samsung started.. long mails//phone calls... We were the poor victims.. Samsung will definitely get the best award for worst customer support. Finally a replacement A/C was given after a month after we first paid for our A/C.

We started cooling ourself in A/C. We thought all troubles are gone.. But soon the japthi notice issue ( mentioned in my 30 May blog) came and we lost the apartment..

Being a courageous person!!, I decided to move to my A/C to my friend's apartment and fix it there. And we carried it there, but soon found out that, the apartment does not qualify for fitting a window A/C. No space between buildings.

Now i am using the A/C to dry up my clothes... Now i understand why samsung delivered me a defective A/C.

Why should i have a working one ?

Tuesday, May 30, 2006

I am homeless.. I lost my apartment

I am homeless.. I lost my apartment

One week back a JAPTHI notice was pasted on my apartment door by LIC housing finance. I do not have any direct contacts with house owner, my dealings are only with the "All India Trading company" broker Chidhambaram at Adyar. I enquired about it, but he said its only a general type of notice, dont worry. Even after repeatedly asking for ownder details, he refused to give that. He said he will take care.

Parallelly we were enquiring at LIC office.. they said further actions will be taken if payments are not done.. caught in a fix, we handled chidhambaram.. he asked us not to be childish.. he gave us an option to vacate. I happily agreed. I decided to stay with friends.

Being homeless feels bad.. two days after i called back chidhambaram and said i will not be vacating, but he refused, he is going to give the apartment to somebody else and getting 1000Rs extra..

I dont know, i am vacating tomorrow morning. Today is supposed to be the last day in my apartment, and i am staying late in office, talking/debugging with my US counterparts..

No last night at my apartment. Perhaps it is good..

Call me if you have a good apartment to offer..

Monday, May 29, 2006

Please make way for ambulance

yesterday i saw, an ambulance waiting behind a line of cars for traffic signal clearance. Here in chennai in rush hours we have to wait around 3 minutes for signal to come. What to do.., it had to wait.

I remember in US I saw a similar situation.. an ambulance came, but it did not have signal and it was waiting behind a line of cars. But there I saw a nice protocol, followed by all. Once the horn from ambulance was heard vehicles from all directions waited in the signal... and the vehicle just in front of the ambulance alerted the vehicle in front by horning.. all the vehicles in that lane did that and that lane alone moved...

Traffic signals were secondary during that time,, ambulance was the highest priority.. Soon after the ambulance went, traffic lights became the master again..

Hope we show the same sense here also..