Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Things that get lost in translation.

Today Shallu and I were having chai at our favorite spot when I saw three Korean kids eating waffles at the table next to us. ‘Oh look, waffles!’ I said. She looked over and said ‘no, they are Koreans’.

97% of India still doesn’t know or trust the Apple Mac and it took me four days to find someone who was willing to ‘try’ to connect Internet to my Mac Book. It’s so foreign to them and I actually heard a story of an Indian guy who stole a Mac Book from a store and sold it for Rs200 (R35) because he thought it was a big calculator.

But, by far, the most bizarre communication blunder has been with my cell phone Network, Aircel. I bought a phone and sim card in Delhi and realized, only after I got to Mussoorie (a two day journey from Delhi) that I could only top up on airtime in Delhi, because, get this, it was a ‘Delhi phone’. And then, to top it all, I started getting messages from Aircel but sent from my own number. At the end of the message they even tell me how much it cost me to receive it. Now, you try explaining, to Aircel, in Hindi, why this is unacceptable.

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