Experience at apple store

I hate to go to customer service centre by myself and get things fixed which something can be done over the phone. In fact I never went to Apple store with kaput apple device ( well apple devices hardly breaks or stop working and this is my own experience of using them since 2008).

But recently the iPad that I bought in 2011 here in Kitchener and which I gave it to my parents stopped charging. Somehow I managed to get it back to see it myself and if possible to fix. I know that there are no Apple stores in India but just the resellers and some private shops who deals with Apple. But there is no presence of Apple store anywhere in India. So after I got my hand on this old friend; I immediately took it to Apple store here in Conestoga Mall. The genius person ( Apple's term) named Eric seen the device. After running some diagnostic he said battery looks fine but he doesn't seems to know the problem.

So he gave me very lucrative option. To buy brand new iPad of same configuration as mine and even in same color in just very nominal upgrade charge of $109 + tax. I found this as good deal after all and decided to give in since my iPad was already out of warranty. This guy quickly gave me new iPad with new magnetic cover since mine was pretty worn out!

The moral of story - don't buy apple devices in India where customer service after warranty period is really a mess.

Unforgettable experiance with Inditan Consulate - Toronto

Typical R.K.Laxman's cartoon!

 

No I was not used to of this kind of services from Government Office -

Recently* I submitted my application for Police Clearance Certificate using VFS office in Toronto. If you have lived long enough (more than 6 months is enough to say enough) in countries like Canada, you are not really accustomed to wait for more than a week or two to get things done in any Government Offices or at least without any confirmation/status updates of your request or any rude behavior. And I did not even dare to think about under-the-table deals that are so prevalent in our country. I may be exaggerating with numbers here, but let me share my experience with Canadian Government-office to begin with this post (a.k.a * Service Ontario). This way few people may be able to relate the pain, frustration which is complementary with the service our offices offer to citizens.

What!! you don't want me to beg at the counter after submitting all the documents, fees for my genuine work done

 1) It took me 5 minutes to renew license plate for my car. Basically you have an option to do it at kiosk so that way people don't have to go anywhere and those machines are in every shopping malls, so even if you do visit those offices the wait time may change from 5 minutes to 15 minutes maximum based on how many peoples are ahead of you. So basically I think those are the ones who don't know how to use those machines. Well I was one of them to begin with.

2) Canadian Passport application - not more than 5 minutes and you get passport within a week mailed to your address. This is first hand stories from few friends of mine who recently acquired Canadian Citizenship.

3) Applying Social Insurance Number - Think of this same as your PAN card in India. Again I went to Service Ontario on busy Saturday. It was a time when a politician from India was in the news for corruption in Commonwealth Games that took place in 2010-2011. The only reason to mention this is because the person at the counter who was another Indian (or may be Pakistani) having conversation with about how our people has no ethics and sense of responsibility towards society. Yes, and in the meantime he gave me SSN number in 30 min including the wait time since it was busy day. The actual card came later in the post within a week time. But I got my number immediately so I can do all the legalities without the actual card.

4) Applying for Health Card - Again i was out of the office within 15 minutes and health card arrived hand in two weeks time.

5) Not just Canada - Last year I applied for visitor visa for Australia to visit my sister and her family. They accepted my application and stamped my passport with valid Visa in just two weeks time. Unfortunately I never made it there! may be next time down under.

Exception !

 I admit that the my experience with CanadaPost is very much similar to Indian Post office, but I rarely go to post office. And they normally don't ignore people waiting in line up like our post office treats us.

Welcome to Indian way of doing business

Once you get used to with the friendly government offices imagine what you expect (or don't expect) when you apply to our own Indian office. Especially passport related, OCI, Visa or PCC (in my case) because that's the only connection you ever have with Indian government while living outside India. And they make sure that you never forget how it always used to be and will ever be while dealing with them. I have got my own realization recently.

                            I applied for Police Clearance Certificate and its been little over 4 weeks time now and there is no sign of change in my application status. The status remained same as it was on day one. After repeated attempts to call the Consulate Office, I managed to get in to talk to real person. After my miserable attempt to throw upon urgency that without my passport all my travel plans are in limbo, the lady keep saying its minimum 4 to 6 weeks with no valid reasoning behind it. Needless to say it was a rude tone. The VFS office told me that it takes maximum 4 weeks but now I have two different answers. I wonder if this office ever heard of Service Level Agreements (SLA). They have no statistics on the website as why there is so much processing time for reasonably simple work. Just last month a colleague of mine got the PCC in two weeks.

                    I lived only two places all over my life in Mumbai (and without ever having any contact with police for wrong reasons!) and these two places are hardly ~10-12 kilometres away from each other.  So few question arises and they will never be answered

• Is it so hard for Central Government to have the defined process for PCC.  Do they do follow-ups with Indian police departments for delayed certificates.?
• Is there anyone responsible to handle grievances.
• The staff at Indian offices - Will they ever be trained to talk politely to others on phone?  
• Why Indian Consulate need original passport for PCC, seems to me that they changed this rule very recently as I read on some of the forums and that without any valid explanation.
• It may soon be my time to find those answers if  my status does not change for another week. I am not expecting any answers nor expecting any change in my status of application.

 To all those who have similar experience - i can only have sympathy for you. At least living in democracy i am able to share this openly. So as every Indian citizen does I will do the same ..just wait and do nothing until some magic happens...

* Service Ontario - When mentioned above Canadian offices, firstly it's called Service Ontario may be that name changes when you go other provinces but essentially they do everything for you. There are no different departments or windows inside. You go to any counter and they will provide all the offered services.


*Recently - After reading this blog you might want to judge the meaning of this word in Indian context

iOS6 and Automatic Data Time Setting

This is my first official blog post about iOS or Apple related stuff. I upgraded to iOS6 yesterday and started wondering Passbook feature and what it can do for me. As soon as I started it, I tried to download apps that can store in Passbooks via link inside it called App Store.  And it give me error saying can not connect to iTunes Store. But I otherwise had no issues with App Store with iOS6 so I realized it something unique bug that not everyone is getting. 

After doing google i found a link which resolved my issue but now I realized I have another issue that my Date wont be set Automatically for some reason. The solution to earlier problem involved changing date manually in iOS device to future date, but now my date wont be set automatically.

Here is the solution for those like me who got lost in new settings, and are lazy enough to set the date manually!

Go to Settings - > Privacy (yeah its new!) -> Location Services (this should be On) -> System Services -> Setting Time Zone. Switch it ON.

That's it! Enjoy your new OS from apple! Its pretty cool

The Book of Mormon

What is that book!?

I was searching for some book in my small collection (I dont dare to call it Library yet!) and happened to see this book  -  "Book of Mormon" ...

Why the hell should I know about it

I never read Gita (and don't plan to) but this book is super boring (no offence). I tried it couple of times and makes no sense. It reminded me of my Mathematics course during my Bachelor degree.  Given my poor knowledge of Christianity, I prefer to stay away from commenting on this book content itself that could hurt sentiments. That is not my intention here. But I rather describe the event that happened last spring when I was waiting for Bus in uptown.

Crisp Morning of Spring and it happened
It was Sunday morning and I was waiting for bus while coming back from Library. A nice looking lady smiled and asked my permission to talk for few minutes. I was so naive, at first that i thought she lost and need directions. Then when she asked me about my religion and talked about Holi festival then I sort of knew what's happening here. I bet few white folks around me must have smiled and ran away as fast as they can. She pretended she knew basics about Hinduism but confused me by asking if it represents Color or Light. Somehow she was trying to knot the whole conversation to Xmas being the same. Festival of Light!. Once I agreed they (after correcting her its Diwali not Holi) are fundamentally same she knew i was trapped.

My views..who cares
I love X'mas festival after living in Canada for 2 years.  I feel people here enjoy this festival as much Hindu people love Diwali. I miss two Indian festivals dearly after coming to Canada. First and foremost is Ganpati and other one is Diwali. But I compensate later by celebrating X'mas here in Canada with my few local friends.

Lecture - 
Then she gave lecture for 30 minutes that i should change my views/religion.  I listened all along thinking how confident that person must be that talking to a road stranger and he will be ready to change his religion in 30 min of brain storming.  Ok I also admit now that she was extremely attractive with beautiful blue eyes. She also told me she is from Wyoming. I remember her state so distinctly because I started doing google maps in my brain where the hell is that state in US. I am 100% confident that most of US citizens wont be able to tell where is this state.

Finally
Any takers for this book or any place to donate in KW?

In search of books..

On recent controversy with Sulman Rushdie's proposed visit to India and the way Govt. of India (which is common for most of us) creates chaos and confusion on sensitive matters, my long urge of reading few books crossed my mind.

1) Satanic Verses by Sulman Rushdie

2) Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India by James De Laine

For some reason mentioned below both these books are banned in India. Ok let me stand corrected - 2nd book is not banned "officially" and as a matter of fact ban was lifted by Supreme Court in recent time. But again looking at above mentioned modus operandi of Indian Government these books are not available in Indian book store and to common man.

Reasons -

Unfortunately, we do have very small (most of the time ineffective) Hindu and Muslim extremist people which are affiliated to some local Neta (leader) who belongs to political party. These thugs who are highly uneducated and belong to low level street life controls what middle class, taxpayers should read. But as I said most of the time nobody gives any value to them but "religion" works like censorship.

So now these books are not there at local store anywhere in India. As i tried to search on the net the book by James Laine is nowhere to be seen. Amazon says 1-2 months of waiting period. Somehow I found Satanic Verses in local library which Im planning to get hold by next week.

Let me know if you know whereabouts of buying/renting the Shivaji book.

In search of Braitenberg's vehicle

Its been a while that i wrote my last blog about amateur astronomy and my little experiences, adventures in life with it. I kept thinking for some time about next topic that I really want to share with everyone and this was in my mind every time but then I thought I should complete this little project and start writing about it. That way at least the name of my blogspot will have meaning. Anyways I'm trying not to make this blog too technical but yes i think this will be first semi technical output today for everyone.

Why I couldn't complete (lame excuses!)

• I guess i was/am very near to its completion but it took so much time and energy already that I think i am thinking to give up when i know i'm near to the finishing boundary.
• Besides the 5 days and well nights too of a week suck all my energy to work on anything that requires my brain to function properly.

I think these excuses are already enough to make my point that "I failed to what I wanted to do as small project" PERIOD

Was it fun...Indeed!

But the knowledge and fun that I had while working on this mini project was out of the way and the joy was enormous. I can only compare it with a piece of code or small software design in office makes me in good mood for couple of days.

Background

The reason lies in the fact that, I get very fascinated watching all those sci-fi movies where Machines take control of humans. When I see or read about on How machines started to react (better word stimuli) to the environment around them, it makes me think why we can not develop one on this basic principle. So that is my motivation to create a vehicle/mechanics which will react to outer stimulus e.g. "light".

So while reading and surfing on the net I came across two sites, one is a new Studio from Microsoft a.k.a Microsoft Robotics Studio which provides all the GUI/API's required to control your robots and the second one is Society Of Robots. This one is really informative active site for all beginners enthusiast who wants to create the robots as hobby.

And It All Started..

Author has given a challenge from Society Of Robots that if you spend $50 you can make your own robot and even primary school kid can do it. So well it hurt my ego (and same time make me happy that i can create my own!). Then I started to look after all the component i need and from where i can get it. Most of them I never heard it before because they were all electronics part...well yeah I did my graduation in Physics but hey it was 10 years back!

I had pity basic questions on what is the name of those parts and then where they used, how they used etc. but soon i had completed the list of things I would need to buy which drives me to another interesting place in Mumbai - Lamington Road.

This is the place on earth where you can almost everything of electronics world, from small resistors, capacitors to big HDMI output LCD tv sets at very cheap price.

Starry Starry night...

Last night myself and my Office friend went upto a remote place on Karjat road called Vangani. Its a station on central line next to Badlapur. KhagolMandal arranges SkyObservation night for amateur astronomers, kids, parents..for everyone. I have been going there since many many years whenever I feel the need to be away from chaos of Mumbai.

And its the 25th anniversary of KhagolMandal group that they started this initiatives.

This is non-profit organization started by hobbyist like us. They are all working professionals from various fields including IT, Journalists, School Teachers everyone. In fact I came to know that few of them are doing PhD's from NCRA (Nation Centre for Radio Astrophysics), Germany etc.

The last night reminds me of visiting the house of one of my Software Architect in Canada. He has the most wonderful, fully computerized small observatory built behind in the back of his house with 14'' reflector telescope. I was like a kid in wonderland when he took us there last year.

I am hoping to buy small telescope and small car ! to follow the star trails and objects one day. Until then I will keep visiting Vangani!