Small fail
Nov. 4th, 2010 12:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
narcasseYesterday the trains conspired to make me late for work but somehow I made it to work on time and had time to stop off for an egg nog latte. I’m not entirely sure how that works since I’m quite precise about timing my train changes till the last minute. The latte wasn’t bad, if a little too sweet, which isn’t how I remember it from the last time I actually had one. I might try a toffee nut latte or a gingerbread one next time at any rate since, while I do like mochas, peppermint’s never done me anything but harm so a peppermint mocha’s probably best avoided. Then again, if I try one on the way back home I can probably make it back in good time to be able to lie down and feel nauseous if I really do experience dire effects. It’s the opposite effect of miso really, which works as a very effective colonic irrigation method for me.
Of course on the way home I just missed my connecting train and when I caught the latter one may have inadvertently troubled the lady who sat next to me by cursing at the lack of connection on my phone. I muttered a “For God’s sake.” at Opera Mini and she apologised and fussed as if she though she’d sat on my coat. Which meant that I felt obliged to go “Bloody browser.” as a follow up to prove that my previous comment hadn’t been directed at her. And of course when I arrived home there was more small fail waiting for me in the form of a letter for the Home Office Identity and Passport Service asking me to call them to ‘discuss’ my application. I had a good rant about that because of course their phone lines are only open between 9 and 5, and the letter implied that they’d tried to reach me by phone, which they clearly hadn’t. FedEx had also been by to tell me that my ‘business’ had been closed when they’d tried to deliver my package.
FexEx are in fact worth a paragraph by themselves. They’ve left two messages on my mobile and it was only yesterday that I managed to speak to a competent phone operator. The first person I spoke to on Friday seemed utterly confused about her job and the second that I spoke to on Tuesday seemed more interested in giving me nonsense details or focusing on specific words that I’d said as if they had some great relevance. But hopefully today my package should arrive. I phoned up with specific ‘suggestions’ about delivery times and the lady I spoke to seemed to be genuinely making note of them. And other than wanting to go to the gym later, I’m going to be in all day now so there’s no excuse.
Of course earlier today there’s been more small fail of the train induced variety. This morning I missed the train I ought to have been on to get to my dental appointment in time but luckily managed to reschedule for an hour later. Then, I mistimed both working out the train that I’d need to take and giving myself enough time to get to the station. Interestingly I did make it to the station in time, only to find that my train was delayed and then delayed again until the estimated arrival time was fluctuating so much that I had to ring up and cancel. Then, as I was on the phone to the dental surgery, the train pulled up, but not in nearly enough time to be of use to me. I was offered another appointment next week but since I’d need to inform work a week in advance, which I could do from home but would prefer to do at the office, even if it is via e-mail, I’ll have to push that back by two weeks. At least it’s an excuse to use an otherwise inexplicable half day holiday allocation that I otherwise wouldn’t know what to do with.
Since the good tends to weigh out against the bad, at least an early morning phone call to the passport office proved what I’d suspected: that their forms are oddly worded and that they were confused at my mysteriously vanishing middle name. The form asked for forename and surname, and since my middle name isn’t either of those I didn’t put it down, but since it’s on my passport usually they were wondering if I’d actually changed my name and if so they wanted proof of it. Proof which, in the UK, is fairly easy to come by if you word it correctly, link it up with your former name and don’t attempt to use it to defraud others. Interestingly, one of my cousins can’t actually spell my legal first name, which, for all its complexity, may as well be ‘Radu’ for the basic nature of the spelling. And yet she can come up with sentences like “May I know what day?” in a text message. This being one of those occasions that my uncle will doubtlessly blame on not having sent her to boarding school: boarding school apparently being capable of solving all problems.
All in all, I can only hope that this list of small fail is, in that typically Burmese way, a prelude to good things, usually in a larger proportion. Tomorrow seems like a good day for it after all and maybe if all does go well I’ll drop by that homewears shop with the lilac union jack mugs and pick up one to go with the soup mug of uncertain origins that has “Quod erat demonstrandum” abbreviated on the side in union jack coloured lettering. In fact, I’ve had that soup mug for years to the point of it being an early childhood memory, which suggests that it’s something that my father may have picked up years before I was born, and proves that his taste is probably just as questionable as my own.
Of course on the way home I just missed my connecting train and when I caught the latter one may have inadvertently troubled the lady who sat next to me by cursing at the lack of connection on my phone. I muttered a “For God’s sake.” at Opera Mini and she apologised and fussed as if she though she’d sat on my coat. Which meant that I felt obliged to go “Bloody browser.” as a follow up to prove that my previous comment hadn’t been directed at her. And of course when I arrived home there was more small fail waiting for me in the form of a letter for the Home Office Identity and Passport Service asking me to call them to ‘discuss’ my application. I had a good rant about that because of course their phone lines are only open between 9 and 5, and the letter implied that they’d tried to reach me by phone, which they clearly hadn’t. FedEx had also been by to tell me that my ‘business’ had been closed when they’d tried to deliver my package.
FexEx are in fact worth a paragraph by themselves. They’ve left two messages on my mobile and it was only yesterday that I managed to speak to a competent phone operator. The first person I spoke to on Friday seemed utterly confused about her job and the second that I spoke to on Tuesday seemed more interested in giving me nonsense details or focusing on specific words that I’d said as if they had some great relevance. But hopefully today my package should arrive. I phoned up with specific ‘suggestions’ about delivery times and the lady I spoke to seemed to be genuinely making note of them. And other than wanting to go to the gym later, I’m going to be in all day now so there’s no excuse.
Of course earlier today there’s been more small fail of the train induced variety. This morning I missed the train I ought to have been on to get to my dental appointment in time but luckily managed to reschedule for an hour later. Then, I mistimed both working out the train that I’d need to take and giving myself enough time to get to the station. Interestingly I did make it to the station in time, only to find that my train was delayed and then delayed again until the estimated arrival time was fluctuating so much that I had to ring up and cancel. Then, as I was on the phone to the dental surgery, the train pulled up, but not in nearly enough time to be of use to me. I was offered another appointment next week but since I’d need to inform work a week in advance, which I could do from home but would prefer to do at the office, even if it is via e-mail, I’ll have to push that back by two weeks. At least it’s an excuse to use an otherwise inexplicable half day holiday allocation that I otherwise wouldn’t know what to do with.
Since the good tends to weigh out against the bad, at least an early morning phone call to the passport office proved what I’d suspected: that their forms are oddly worded and that they were confused at my mysteriously vanishing middle name. The form asked for forename and surname, and since my middle name isn’t either of those I didn’t put it down, but since it’s on my passport usually they were wondering if I’d actually changed my name and if so they wanted proof of it. Proof which, in the UK, is fairly easy to come by if you word it correctly, link it up with your former name and don’t attempt to use it to defraud others. Interestingly, one of my cousins can’t actually spell my legal first name, which, for all its complexity, may as well be ‘Radu’ for the basic nature of the spelling. And yet she can come up with sentences like “May I know what day?” in a text message. This being one of those occasions that my uncle will doubtlessly blame on not having sent her to boarding school: boarding school apparently being capable of solving all problems.
All in all, I can only hope that this list of small fail is, in that typically Burmese way, a prelude to good things, usually in a larger proportion. Tomorrow seems like a good day for it after all and maybe if all does go well I’ll drop by that homewears shop with the lilac union jack mugs and pick up one to go with the soup mug of uncertain origins that has “Quod erat demonstrandum” abbreviated on the side in union jack coloured lettering. In fact, I’ve had that soup mug for years to the point of it being an early childhood memory, which suggests that it’s something that my father may have picked up years before I was born, and proves that his taste is probably just as questionable as my own.
