At least one other idiot

AOG, Madrid

Customer service from hell. That is what my friend just told me on the phone. Courtesy of Iberia Airlines. He called, it seems, to confirm that the airline had his and his partner's names correctly, which they didn't since one of them said "Ms" on the ticket. 

The lady on the other side of the phone line, ("for help in English, press one"), after listening to what my friend had said, merely replied -slightly irritated- that if they wanted to do a prebooking change, they had to contact their agent.

So my friend (Taurus) explained to the lady (inept) once again that he merely wanted to confirm that they had their names right. They are flying down to Uruguay for Christmas and New Years (And I so envy them!). 

Again, she didn't listen to a word he said and just told him that if he wanted to prebook his ticket, he had to contact his agent.

Now, if you can read what my friend was saying, and you can read her replies, it is obvious that she wasn't listening to anything he was saying.

How often in life does that happen? I would venture that it happens quite a lot. 

I now that very often I respond to what people say, but somehow, things get "lost in translation" from the time they leave the person's mouth to the time they reach my brain. They say one thing, and I hear another.

It is so easy to get confused. I often tell Madame Mère to listen to what I'm saying, and not to what she thinks I am saying. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. 

However, I too do that. 

I react to what I think is being said and not to what actually is being said. There is obviously a breakdown in communication. We hear, but we just don't listen. 

And sometimes we don't care to listen because we think -and therein lies our error- that we know it all. 

That we are possessors of the truth, or at least, our truth, subjective though it might be, we own nothing but that which lives in our heads, and we care very little for that which lives in the heads of others since, and we all know this to be true, we are always right.

What a great disservice to mankind, as well as to ourselves this is, isn't it? 

The great Civil Rights leader W.E.B. Du Bois wrote, "Herein lies the tragedy of the age: not that men are poor, - all men know something of poverty; not that men are wicked; - who is good? not that men are ignorant, - what is truth? Nay, but that men know so little of men." And he was right. 

We know very little about other people, even those close to us, but we also don't care to know anymore than what we do since we spend precious little time getting to know anybody these days. 

Ever heard of speed-dating? You talk to someone for 5 minutes (or less) and them move on to the next person. Now I ask, can you be your fabulous self in just 5 minutes with 20 different people? 

 No, of course not. "Its a great way to meet new people!" they tell us. But it isn't. Not really. 

I think that beyond a physical impression, little else will be retained by us. And after talking to 20 people, I think most men will agree, who will you go back for? The person who stimulated your brain the most, or the pretty face with the wicked smile and killer ass? 


Exactly. So why pretend?


Facebook, Twitter, online chats, it is all so immediate, so quick. But I dare say that it was always like this. I don't think speed is responsible for our shortcomings. Perhaps it just made a bad situation worse.

And I do wish it were different. Personally speaking, I love it when I meet a like-minded person. 

Why? Because they make you feel like you are not the only idiot in the Universe who thinks like you do. There is, at least, one other idiot like you! 

Isn't it comforting to know that you are not the only one of your species?

And what better than getting to know someone you think you can learn something from? 

Yes, I know that this is not always the case, but it would be folly to think that we can't learn something from everyone we meet in life. However small.
 
"One's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions," wrote the American XIX century writer Oliver Wendell Holmes. And how right he was.

In the end, after the lady in question hung up on him, exasperated as she was by all her effort, my friend called back, pressed #2, and spoke to a Spanish speaking operator who fixed his problem. 

There's a lot to be said for manners and good customer service, but that is a post for another day.

A non ex in Madrid

AOG, Madrid

Many years ago, perhaps 10, I met someone in London who appeared to be semi interested in me.

Nothing ever happened between us, since we met at a friend's place, and then all of us went out to dinner together but I noticed during the bus ride that I was being watched. However, my self esteem being what it was, I never gave this much thought. Neither one of us acted on it.

Then time passed, and I didn't see this person again. I forgot about them. Relationships came and went.

Then a few years later, I visited Madrid, and there was this person again, smiling. I didn't know they were no longer in London.

I was surprised.

Thinking we could have been friends I went over. We spoke.

This person confessed some sort of feelings back then (much more than what I expected) and did so just as we were leaving the locale. Other plans, other commitments that night, ensured we got nowhere fast and our conversation ended slightly abruptly.

All I heard was a "Don't you see what effect you have on me?" and that was it. Until then I had not seen that "effect". Intuited, yes.

We said we'd catch up the next day. Same neighborhood, common interests... But no. I was there, half hoping to see them again. But they did not show up.

I left the next day for London.

Then more time went by, and I moved to Madrid.

Last week I saw this person in a bar. No longer attractive. Older. Undesirable in "that" way. And yet I wonder if I should have said hi. Hello. How are you?

But I didn't.

It was a case of me seeing this person, and this person not seeing me back.

I'm not upset, or anything like that, far from it. I just hoped I wouldn't be so shy and could just say hi to people now and again.

What does protocol dictate about speaking to non-exes?

April's little disasters

AOG, Madrid

Interesting month this. It would appear that the electronic Gods have it in for me. For those of you outside the UK, the Gods in questions hate me and are making me pay for something. What? No clue. It is a case of electronic karma gone haywire. This must be payback for some crime I must have comitted in a past life against some machine. I probably destroyed a wind-up clock in the XVII century or I burnt an expensive chinese sing-song or something. What has happened lately is definitely karma-related.

The month began with blackouts. At first I thought it was only at work, where, since the Popular Party decided to ban the Prisa group from all its public acts, we also thought we were the victims of electric terrorism. The power went out quite frequently a couple of weeks ago day after day. But when I got home, I realised that it was Madrid that was suffering these power shortages. When I got home, the TV, DVD, and the digital encoder were not working properly. I had to reprogram everything. The power had gone out at home too.

And then I thought that was that. Wrong-o-la!

Two weekends ago, I went to a wedding in Bilbao with Juan. Upon my return to Madrid, I discovered that my laptop, which was working perfectly before I left, was now out of order. As of today, it still is. The warranty covers some things, and does not cover some others. It does not cover software, and it looks like it is a software problem. Those of us who are uninitiated upon the mysteries of computers, could care less. The email machine is not working, that is all I know!

But it does not stop there. I was in Barcelona last weekend. I got back on Sunday evening. The home phone was not working. It is dead. As of today, it still is. My phone company, Jazztel, has not yet repaired the fault, whatever it might be.

Does it end there? Like heck! Yesterday, as I was drawing the curtains, the curtain pole fell off! I had to laugh. Just in case, I'm taking a train to Barcelona this weekend.

A day without mobile phones... not ! !

AOG, Madrid

Yesterday, numerous Consumer Groups in Spain staged a "Day without mobiles" (cell phones for those of you in the Americas). Was it done in conjunction with some international protest against global warming, or the health risks to the brain of mobile radio waves? No. It was to do with pricing.

Last year the Spanish parliament, (the Cortes) passed a law which forbade the usual practice of "rounding off" tariffs, charges, minutes, etc in Spain.

Up until then, and if you have a car you can relate to this, you would go to a car park, and be charged a full hour even if you had gone over the hour by a few minutes. The same with telephone calls. The government was obviously trying to help consumers and wanted to teach a few companies a lesson.

But, as the saying in Spain goes, he who makes the law, creates the loop hole. Mobile telephone companies in Spain- or at the very least Movistar, owned by Telefónica- have hit back by raising the cost of a phone call based on future losses. Spain already has one of the highest mobile phone call tariffs in Europe.

According to today's news, Vodafone and Orange gave yesterday's event little notoriety and declared that network usage had been the same as that of "any other Thursday".

Joan Clos, Spain's Minister of Industry, did declare that he had "endeavored to refrain from using his mobile" as a sign of solidarity with consumer groups.

I for one only found out that the event was happening at all when I got to work and began to surf the newswires. Although the consumer groups in charge say the event was a success, I have my doubts. Not enough publicity had been given to it. If no one knows the event is happening, the proverbial tree may as well stay put in the forest, because no one even knows it is there to make a sound.

Nonetheless, I agree fullheartedly with the move and, should they ever stage another, will make sure my mobile remains switched off.