my valuable signature

Everytime you go shopping here and buy something by using your atm cards ,the machine issues two receipts :one for your record and the other for merchant. I learned very soon that I'm supposed to sign the  merchant copy and return it to him .my signature is printed on the atm card,there is no question of pin code or anything else on offline shopping.so ? Logically the salesperson should keep the card,issue the receipts ,get my signature and return my card and let me go only if my signature matches with the printed one on the card.

As another very normal wonder(!), they don't care about the signature and just return the card after completion of transaction , assuming that the card holder is the owner of card .i found this  very scary and insecure though I'm left with no other option so I just have to watch my card carefully ,otherwise  everybody who finds it in case of being lost or whatever would be able to use it easily without any problem!

 

On the other hand ,I found this specific situation at which they checked my signature and compared it to another signature of mine and complained that they don’t match!!!

can you believe it? I couldn't!

Now guess where that happened..

To my wonder,it was in library of  our college which is the place that student and staff laugh  together ,talk over phone  loudly ,throw the books on the tables while others are studying, janitors actually move you  few meters away when they are cleaning and etc.

 

Last week I wanted to borrow a book,I signed the borrower's card of the book and handed it over with my book ticket to the librarian . The librarian actually stood up and called me and said that the signature on my ticket and the card don’t match!

Anyways ,I can say ,that I experienced a wide range of feelings from amazement  and anger to finding that situation hilarious and funny  ,  at that fraction of second ,then resigned the card and got my book and left them with their rules and disciplines!

The Transformation!

 

One of the most interesting things I have experienced here is that people ask me address ,time ,information about a particular shop and etc.

So what?

To clarify my point, I should say by people I mean mostly people whose knowledge of English is usually limited to number of words and phrases..

It's happening again and again and what makes it more funny? When I'm walking with my Indian friends in the campus or outside and people still, ask me, about the post office ,main gate,that department,main road and such a places , and you know what? That's the very right time to look at my friends' face and see how they are wondered about what just happened !there is more..

Once I went to a beach for vacation and I remember many of those local sellers were asking from which area of India I was ..!

The other case which amazes me here,is that you really can't say if you can communicate with someone or not,just by looking at the person.let me put it in this way that there were many times I met young people who seemed to be educated (which they were probably) but, I had a very hard time to ask about a rout or a bus number and etc.On the other hand, in countless number of times,old or very normal looking(even illiterate-looking!!) people approached me ,to ask about something and I was ready to say " I don’t get you ,english please ,no telugo ,no hindi " or just simply shrug and leave them but in my surprise, they started to have a nice conversation which I wasn't expecting at all.

Any ways , getting back to the first case,I guess my transforamtion to a native-looking person is on the way,except I will need a paper in my hands explaining in local words that I can't talk!

Sir,were you dealing drugs ?

A friend of mine told this story and i want to share it with you.we,as foreigners are supposed to extend our visas once a year in immigration office .the result is in the form of a paper in our hands ,which is called "RP" or resident permit.

Normally there are branches of this immigration office in different cities,esp. If there are international universities in those cities.

my friend used to live in a smaller city with a newly opened branch of that office.since the office was new,it took a while for them to know about the procedures and learn how to deal with different conditions and cases.

So during that warm up time of the office in that city,My friend's friend who had got visa to Malaysia but didn't go there ,visited that new branch to obtain that Resident Permit .

Apparently in the visas,they mention that carrying drug in Malaysia is a very serious offence and the punishment will be execution or something like that.

So The officer opened the passport, leaved through that and reached that Malaysia visa page of it.

I dont know if his English was weak or what , but after looking at the visa asked the guy "so you were dealing drugs in Malaysia?"

That guys face went totally white and he really freaked out. He said it took like 2 or 3 hours to make that officer understand the story of that visa and that warning message along it!

 

So make sure you review the details written in your passports if you are thinking of visiting this country and  try to come up with some good explanations , before landing in airport !

 

 

The disappointing deposit machine

Few days ago I went to the branch of this bank at which I deposit the rent of my house.there is a deposit machine installed in this bank recently and in the ads the bank sent out it was mentioned that this deposit machine is only one in our district.so whenever i visit the atm room of this bank,the line ending to this machine is the longest comparing to the others for the ordinary atms in that room.
I was in the line and a guy tapped my shoulder and asked me if he can deposit money by this machine manually or not..i said yes and told him that it would save lots of time and the process is very easy to do.he went inside the bank and checked the truth of my words with couple of staff and returned and got to the end of the line.
I turned back once or twice to see him if he is still there and he was there ,looking excited and/or doubtful to do the deposit through the machine...
After few minutes there was only one person in front of me.he got to the machine and his first and second trial to complete the transaction failed.the security guy who usually guides new customers of atms came to him and tried to do the work couple of times then turned to him and said the machine was down..that person went aside and it was security guy's task to explain the matter to the rest..
Apparently people behind me were busy and didn't know what just happened ,since they were all still there after that matter.so i stepped out of the line and the security was talking to them,and i could easily see that doubtfully excited guy's expression :too disappointed! Especially after all checking and hearing about how well and fast he can make the deposit through that machine!
So it might be a better idea to make sure that the deposit line inside the bank is short enough before answering people's question about deposit machines!

sailing pets and their lovely worms!

 I have been checking the local classified Ad sites for pet adoption in last  couple of weeks.

the thing is I don't believe in selling or buying pets and therefore I look for free adoption ads esp. those looking for urgent adoption because  their owners are incapable of taking care of their pets for different reasons!

Naturally it takes a very long time to find a suitable case of adoption ...so I came across many ads during this search .

I found many Ads that had been promoting their pets for "SAIL"  and in one case which I particularly remember, it was mentioned that pet (a Persian cat I think it was ) was registered, having all the papers and properly WORMED !

 

then I came to this conclusion that "Wormed" pets , esp. those being given up for SAILing are desirable and having fans these days, otherwise why would they be up there on these sites?

makes sense?

 

the mysterious imperfect pizza

I used to make pizza at home and when I say making pizza, I mean making it from scratch! including the pizza base , sauce and toppings.

But when I moved to my previous house , I stopped doing that for some reasons ,including being very involved with my pets ,some friends and their issues.

So I didn't think of that till I moved to this new house in which I'm living now and  couple of months ago, I decided to make pizza at home again! but this time I was hoping to get the base bread from the stores.

I discovered there are only few number of shops that have this pizza bread and most of them are far from my place, except one supermarket!

this supermarket is like 20 minutes of walking from my place and on the main road, which means it's on my way to home almost everyday!

so far everything seemed good, so I thought! 

I was excited for my discovery and arranged everything at home and headed to that supermarket for pizza bread and cheese. I grabbed the pizza bread but I couldn't find  pizza cheese in there!

I thought they were out of pizza cheese ,so I got it from somewhere else , which didn't(and doesn't ) have pizza bread..

so I kept going to that supermarket and found out many people buy the pizza bread from that shop apparently, since it goes out of stock by afternoon and then further  I realized that basically they don't have the  pizza cheese and on the other hand, the other shops have the cheese but not the bread..

and I was wondering what do people do with the pizza breads w/o cheese from that supermarket at noon? And you might come up with the same question for the pizza cheese from other shops!

 

 

 

 

 

the midnight elevtor goes beyond the 3 dimentions!

The elevator of our floor is like 20 meters away from the wall next to which  I sleep and just like all the  elevators  in non-commercial places I have seen in this city,this one is also having the double- sliding-cage type door and the speaker inside the elevator announces to close it when it's open and plays a short music between announcements and during it's operation.

 

since I live on the ground floor I never use it, and never saw it to be broken and not working.

But the specific matter I want to write about is that sometimes between midnight and early in the morning ,like 3 or 3:30 am, I can hear it saying "please close the door,boom beem bleem bleem,boom,please close the door!"

and I actually wake up at those moments and check my phone for the time!

The thing is it doesn't stop there,it keeps repeating this for a while .I lose my consciousness and fall asleep again and I don't know what really happens there ..But what I guess is that it must be some kind of creature that either can not understand that bloody saying or doesn't belong to this dimension of the world..otherwise everybody realizes closing that door esp. at that at time, right?

 

lets guess from where i am!

I've been living in India since 2010 and I have come across different people here as expected.

As they say,India is the country of wonders in many aspects and one of the things that really makes me wonder ,though in another way, is what I call the " sequence of countries".

let me explain: a random passenger, lecturer, salesperson , waiter , driver and etc. sees you and asks you one of these questions (or a combination of them) :

1-from where?

2-which country?

3-where you?

4-country?

 

In the beginning , I used to actually answer them , but later for some personal reasons preferred not to. Then the problem appeared was that their reaction wasn't as I was expecting and they wouldn't just let it go and instead ,they tried to guess the country from which I came here!

 

there is nothing funny I think about these countries but the order of mentioning them..like you are either from the USA or china or something like that!

 

So ,the sequence of guessed countries was /is :

(sorted by years)

2010: USA, England (or) Kuwait.

2011:USA,Spain (or) Italy ,China!, Israel!

2012:USA,Kuwait,North India!

 

for your information the last one just happened last week ,in an auto rickshaw ...and I am still wondering from where on earth these orders come up! 

the next time I may not say but be my guest,take a guess !

 

 

 

 

 

 

ma'm ! i'm concerned about my mind!

so it was the first year at my new college in India , in 2010.

since it was the first year the common engineering subjects where presented. our class was  very populated ..something like 80+ people from 3 or more different batches who where there for the common subjects.

we had that subject called English communication skills lab or something like that..

we where supposed to do some exercises on the computers and yes! people where playing or roaming on their pc's most of the time.

in middle of the semester, the mock seminar was scheduled which was a preparation for the main seminar in the end.

the day arrived and half of the class where there to speak up about something they want for some few minutes.

of course,the professors where good enough ,with high knowledge.

so the first person finished the work on the stage . the professor had noted down some suggestions of improvement for the person  during the work and then she started to mention them " as far as the language concerns , you should do .." this and that  and not be nervous...

the second person went up and then ,madam did the same "  as far as the language concerns , you should not use.."

 

the third ,fourth ..and I think ,yes ..almost for everybody this idiom was used : " as long as the language concerns.." .

that day I was of course excited and nervous for my speech! that I couldn't actually get my attention more engaged in this boring and very repetitive idiom..but trust me, when you hear it almost 40 times in  1.5 hours , you will find it funny, irritating and concerning enough to remember it after 2 years.

so , with all due respect ma'm, i'm more concerned about my mind! which I should had told you that day!

 

 

 

 

 

 

let's begin!

It has been a while that I was thinking of blogging about the funny stuff I experience in daily life.

I used to post some of these stuff directly on my facebook account ,but then I realized it's a better idea to post these writings somewhere rather than my facebook wall and don't mix them any more!

I will try to write about the real experiences with the least manipulation and keep it inoffensive as far as I can.

It will be my 4th blogging experience, though my other weblogs are either deactivated or left alone forever!  and I think, I am going to have another weblog soon to write about the serious stuff as well.
 

So,here we go : it's not about the "darkside"  or "lightside" ,but mostly the Funside.