Wednesday, August 30, 2006
*studying japanese...dreaming of a happy place where driving is optional, and drifters blend in...*madame le professeur at 8:59 PM
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
in january, a trailor lost a tire (that was on backward!) on a highway. everyone was driving 80 mph, and the car behind the truck got stuck on the tire and went from 80 to 0. i was right behind that car and thought it was just slowing down fast. when i realized it was stopping!!!, i slowed down as fast as i could, but i was only halfway stopped before i hit the car and went to the hospital for a week. this lacerated my spleen, which carries about 4 gallons of blood. before anyone could attend to my lacerated spleen, a cop had to ask me 20 questions in order to write my ticket, since "i was not in control of my car and should have been able to stop my car from 80 to 0 in a few feet." i received a ticket, but the trailor who was careless with his tires didn't get anything. obviously he was in control of his vehicle, so isn't dropping road blocks like this attempted murder? i guess that's somehow okay? a few days ago a cop was behind me and almost hit me. i was driving 10 mph in a parking lot and "seemed like i was going to turn" but i didn't, so i "forced the cop to almost hit me." i guess he was in control of his car too? he didn't hit me but still felt obligated to give me a $60 ticket for his inconvenience. something about this seems !highly! inconsistent...is there possibly a "better driving bureau" here?madame le professeur at 9:56 PM
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
today was a great day. nothing special had to happen today to make it great. it was just a normal day, which makes it so much better than yesterday. i accomplished only a few things, but it didn't take my entire day to do. i feel like i have left the twilight zone again where nothing makes sense (a place where i find myself once every few weeks) and reentered normality. my shower didn't turn itself off when i finished, elevators didn't stop whenever i needed one as if they "knew"...these things are nice but don't make any sense. i can live with or without them. most importantly, all of the transactions and interactions that i made worked the way they were supposed to. it's only 7:45 p.m., and i am not exhausted. i still have a few things to do before a long trip tomorrow, but i have plenty of energy to do them. maybe it's the ~*~*~sushi~*~*~here is the sushi one of my friends ate instead...it was more photogenic :
i love this place...it was happy hour, so i ate the sushi that floated by in the miniature boats.
madame le professeur at 7:42 PM
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
what is happening to customer service? yesterday evening i had a manicure and pedicure to reward myself for working extra long hours the past month. everything was higher at this place, but it is worth it because they seem to clean and sterilise the equipment that they use. you get what you pay for i guess. it was $1 extra to use a card, but i am doing that until i get my (delayed) paycheck. then they asked me if i wanted to put the tip on the card or pay it in cash. you *ask* for tips now? well, the job was only half done, (they do your fingernails after you pay, so you don't mess them up) so this time i was tipping out of fear and obligation, which isn't as rewarding. imagine if waitresses asked for their tips before they brought the food and fast food places asked for tips before handing you your food. anyway, i expected quality as a result. but somehow, between then and this morning, all of the paint had chipped off my fingernails, though my toenails were fine. i can't think of anything i did that could have caused that.last night i also tried to make a mobile payment online 4 times, and 4 times it said my zip code was wrong and declined the payment. i called the credit card customer service and explained that this has happened before and the zip code that i give them matches the one they have for me...so it must be a problem with the phone company? i decided to deal with it in the morning when the offices would be open. then i called to cancel magazine subscriptions that some company started sending me before i start getting charged. it was automated, and i had to listen to all of the deals that i might be missing then find my way through this series of puzzles, "i want to make sure that i cancel this correctly, would you like us to cancel but send you all of your remaining subscriptions and then start the new term?" i somehow managed to JUST cancel 2 subscriptions successfully, so when it got to the third one, i kept saying the name of the magazine and the system "didn't recognise it"...according to this card that i got in the mail and according to this system, i only had 2 subscriptions, but i am receiving 3 unwanted subscriptions with my name misspelled the same way on all of them! finally, i got to talk to a real person and explained that there should be a third magazine, but it is showing no more to cancel. she said sometimes they just forward you to someone after cancelling 2 to "make sure you do it right," (by that does she mean to keep you from successfully cancelling the last one?) i actually wasn't forwarded to a real person until after the system told me 3 times that i had cancelled all of the subscriptions. she wouldn't tell me why it was telling me that, but she found the last subscription and cancelled it (only after repeating what the system had already said twice about all of the deals and the puzzle you have to get through to cancel the subscription). by now it was 4 a.m., and i felt like i had wasted most of the day accomplishing very little.
this morning, i went to have my nails fixed, then to a meeting about my future teaching job, then back to my office where i have a land line, since i can't afford the 900 peak minute plan that i need to call customer service numbers between 9-5. i spent about 30 minutes cancelling something else, then an hour calling the mobile company and the credit card. the credit card assured me that they had authorized 4 payments (for $1) last night, and i said that isn't the amount *i* authorised when making the payments! i finally got someone to explain that authorisations are always for $1, and you are charged whatever amount the company sends when they receive authorisation from the credit card. if the company somehow charges you a wrong amount, you can dispute it. this is about the most ineffective system that could possibly exist! why not just take whatever amount you authorise to begin with? so i called the mobile company to see if they would "accept the authorisation" with a payment by phone. they must have tried about 3 or 4 times and said "it isn't authorized." but when i called the credit card again, it *was* (now 7 times!) this went on for an hour before the credit card advised that i go to one of the mobile stories in person and have *them* call and get an authorization from them. they also suggested that i contact my post office to see if this is my real zip code??? going to the mobile store seemed to be the only thing left that made sense. at this point, i didn't know if i would be charged $7 and a late fee for not making a payment or over $500? for several payments that have been authorized. i had asked the credit card if i would be charged all of these payments, which would ruin my available credit, and they said only if the mobile company sends that to them. is this how all credit cards work? i usually just run it or type in my number, and i think that amount goes directly to the card. anyway, the store wouldn't call the credit card customer service. they called their own customer service people??? those people eventually called the credit card for me and we were on the phone for 2 hours between them and e-services? they figured out that the problem is in the mobile company's website, and they are going to "run a ticket" to find out the problem. i can check back in a couple weeks to see what they find. in the meantime, they asked me to try to pay in the store. if i had known i could do that, i would have 2 hours ago!!!!!
it is now 8 p.m., and in the last 2 days, i have only managed to accomplish this : cancel things i never asked for in the first place and make one online payment. i would like to become an engineer and fix problems like these, but then i realised they must be the ones hired to cause these problems so that companies can brag about their customer service people? i never had problems like this when i mailed in my payments. i think i will go back to doing that (and as much else as possible) the way i did things 15 years ago. i really would like to live like it's 2006 and like it, i just don't understand it, people seem greedy, careless, and dishonest, i can't seem to buy anything without some unwanted disaster attached, and things considered to be improved seem worse. things are "faster" but take more of my time, people work longer hours, are stressed, and have less time to raise their families, and nothing seems to be safe. i'm looking for a bright side, but i can't find one.
madame le professeur at 6:57 PM
Monday, August 14, 2006
there were 4 police cars outside the back door when i came home the other day. when i asked the maintenance man what was going on, he said, "oh one or two cars?" and i said, no 4! he jumped down from the fire escape and said let's see what's going on! he disappeared. so i asked the custodian what he thought was going on, and his exact words were, "oh they do that, it's for protection." i said i've never seen even one car before for protection, and he said i've probably just never been home when they "do that". apparently...the maintenance man hasn't either.madame le professeur at 4:36 PM
Friday, August 11, 2006
i managed to "drive off" from a gas station, though not in the conventional way...actually, it was more like the opposite of a drive off. i paid for the gas and forgot to pump it. it wasn't until i noticed that i only had 1/4 of a tank and it didn't seem right that i rushed back down the street. fortunately only a few minutes had passed, and the gas was still there.madame le professeur at 1:43 PM
Tuesday, August 08, 2006
moment of the day (evening) : went to sekisui, signed my ticket without first giving them my card. i wondered why it didn't have a place to put your name! well...at least they noticed, and we took care of it before i managed to escape (though not intentionally of course). sushi and plum wine saki...yum.....madame le professeur at 9:34 PM
Monday, August 07, 2006
I just called to apologise for missing an appointment that I first thought was Monday then Tuesday (but still a half hour ago), then realised that was actually tomorrow. "Of course I'm 'okay' why wouldn't I be?" On the way back home yesterday, at a random place where there is nothing significant, I didn't recognise my surroundings, though I've passed them a million times, and suddenly became paranoid that I was driving in the opposite direction somehow, though I hadn't turned around (or didn't remember doing so), because for a brief moment, I clearly and vividly remembered passing through a town in the reverse direction, though I obviously hadn't, since that would be impossible given my starting point and the fact that I hadn't been driving long enough to reach that point, unless of course you change one variable - the end point (or the start point...depending on whether you are looking at it from the standpoint of reality or my brain at the time), or unless I did actually turn around (without realising it), which scared me a little when it crossed my mind. Then...as quickly as I had been confused, everything made sense again. It's great to be me.madame le professeur at 4:10 PM
