Every obstacle is an opportunity for research.

Prepaid Tales

Today morning, I had a pre-paid talk-time balance of 58 bucks. As luck would have it, the first call I thought of making today morning was to my brother in Australia. I wondered for a moment what would be the current calling rates to Australia and deciding that 58 must surely be more than enough, I proceeded to dial his number.

To my surprise, I was greeted with a message saying, "You have insufficient balance to make this call"! I was bemused. 58 bucks not enough to make an ISD call! In these times! Ok, I decided that I better call my mom and ask her to tell my brother to call me. He had confirmed earlier that he got much cheaper calling rates from there. So I dialed my mom's number.

Horror of horrors, I got the same message again, "Insufficient balance". I was thoroughly miffed at Airtel prepaid's unprofessionalism, as I saw it. A call to my mom should cost only 1 Re., why do they claim I do not have enough balance to even make a local call? Now they will force me to recharge and then only allow me to make any calls. So ran my thoughts...

In my indignation, I decided I wont recharge right away. I reached lab and just when my eyes fell on the date/time on my desktop, a bell rang in my head and it suddenly occurred to me that perhaps the validity of my prepaid card had expired. I checked it and turns out, yeah, that was the case. :) That explained why I was unable to make calls. And that is perfectly fine, however, the misleading error message that greeted me had me all baffled earlier, and led me to jump to the wrong conclusion that these people were out to fleece me. :D

Well, finally I recharged with "lifetime validity" and was able to make calls successfully. Btw, when I checked the expiry date of "lifetime validity", it says Feb 14, 2013. A friend informed me that that was the date of expiry of their license. So, in essence, lifetime validity refers to lifetime of the service provider, and not the lifetime of the human being. That is still acceptable I guess since 3 years is still long enough, and the service providers likely expect to renew their license by that date. But it still begs the question, "why the surprising affinity to Valentine's day...?"

Dont be sad that its over, be glad that it happened.

Dard mein bhi yeh lub muskura jaate hain
Beete lamhe hamein jab bhi yaad aate hain

Chand lamhat ke waaste hi sahi
Muskura kar mili thi mujhe zindagi
Teri aagosh mein din thhe mere kate
Teri baahon mein thhi meri raatein katin
Aaj bhi jab woh manzar nazar aate hain
Dil ki veeranion ko mita jaate hain
Dard mein.. beete lamhe..

Perspectives rule the world! If you keep putting yourself in others shoes, you might forget how to wear your own.

Drown yourself in sorrow, or drown yourself in work. Either way, drown you must.