Chp 629. Arsenal Membership

On Saturday, two awesome things happened. First, Arsenal totally outplayed Chelsea with three beautiful goals (much to the pain and dismay of Chelsea ManUtd fans).

Secondly, my AMSC membership renewal kit finally arrived by mail.

For those who are unaware, the AMSC - Arsenal Mumbai Supporters Club is the first Indian Arsenal fan club to be officially recognized by Arsenal FC. You can read more about it at Arsenal's official website here - Arsenal Mumbai.

I used to be a part of the AMSC for many years when I was working back in Mumbai, before I moved to Pune and lost track. This year, I decided to become a part of it again and applied for a renewal.

The membership renewal process was simple, I didn't need any vetting as I still knew most of the admins. I just had to make an online transaction to pay for the renewal fees, and just like that, I was back in the fold again.

I received a couple of official merchandise as well, provided by Arsenal FC.

I like being a registered supporter for Arsenal because the club is close to my heart and this is my way of giving something back to the club. Plus, it kinda gives me bragging rights over those other rival fans whose club won't even know they exist, while my name is proudly there among my club's supporters' list :D :P

Nyah nyaah :P

So, here's to interesting times ahead, as Arsenal prepares itself to clinch the title this year :)

Cheers.

Chp 628. Bring Me To Life - India to Brazil

Four years ago, I wrote this blog post - Those good ol cassette days, reminiscing about the golden era of tape cassettes. In that post, I displayed photos of my cassette collection (which I still have with me to this day).

A few months ago, I received a mail from somebody who stumbled across one of my cassette photos in that blog post via online search. He is a huge fan of Evanescence and he collects their CDs and cassettes from all over the world. He asked me if I was willing to sell my "Fallen" cassette to him, as he didn't have an Indian version (Sony Music) yet.

His name is Helton Araujo, and he's from Brazil. I sent him photos of my cassette again, as requested -

When he found out that my cassette even had a lyrics sheet on the cover, he was even more excited and asked me how much I was willing to sell it to him for.

I mean, I'm not a big fan of Evanescence, I just like some of their songs because of their Gothic influenced style of music. I am a huge fan of Gothic Metal and Symphonic Metal, especially female-fronted bands like Sirenia, Within Temptation, Nightwish, Theatre of Tragedy, Visions of Atlantis, Macbeth, Xandria, Atargatis, Lacuna Coil, Lunatica etc (as obvious from some of my old posts like Sweet Gothic Love and The women in my life).

Though I don't consider Evanescence to be on par with some of my favorite symphonic gothic bands as I treat it to be more of a nu-metal punk rock gothic band, I still like some of their songs, especially "Bring Me To Life", "My Immortal" and "Going Under".

And that is why I was quite honoured to meet a hardcore fan of Evanescence and I truly understood what it was like to be crazy about a particular band. And so I told him I wasn't going to sell the cassette to him, I was going to give it to him for free :)

For me, I would rather see my old worn-out cassette lying in the hands of a genuine collector who treats it with utmost care, rather than collecting dust on my bookshelf.

He couldn't believe it when I told him that. I mean, comon, there must be a catch to it right? Somebody you've just met for the first time online on the other side of the world said he'll give you something for free, pretty much sounds like one of those Nigerian 419 scam cases, tbh. But yeah, he trusted me, and I told him he only had to pay for the courier.

It was then that I learnt a lot of things about sending stuff from India to Brazil by parcel :D

All private couriers like DHL, First Flight etc were super expensive! The minimum cost to send that small piece of cassette to Brazil from India was around INR 6000!

Daymmm.

Hector then told me to send it to him via Post Office, as that would be much cheaper than private couriers. And so during one of our office lunch breaks, my colleague Amit took me to the Post Office here in Pune (just in case Marathi needed to be spoken).

 Took one last photo with my "Fallen" cassette at the Post Office.

We found the parcelling division. There were a couple of people ahead of us, and they were all sending really huge parcels to different destinations, while there I was, with a very small cassette in my hand :D

They asked me to put the cassette in an envelope...

After that, the Post Office clerk typed in a couple of stuff and handed me my receipt. Can you believe it, it costs only just 156 bucks to send that parcel from India to Brazil!!??

Compare that to the INR 6000+ charged by private couriers! I even told Hector there was no need for him to pay for the courier cost. He was happy :)

But the downside to using the Post Office service is that, it takes a lot of time. I sent the cassette to Hector on 10th June. He received it on 24th July. 45 days. But still, for 156 bucks, I still think that was a very good deal.

Hector was happy anyway. He sent me these photos the moment he received the cassette :)

And so just like that, another good deed was done across the globe. I love how technology makes this so simple. Do check out Hector's amazing collection of Evanescence CDs and cassettes - Hector Collection. He has more than 150 of them, and it sure feels good to know my cassette is now among one of them :)

Cheers everyone, and do reach me in case you need any cassette for your collection :D

G'nite.

Chp 627. Reaching 500 Games + Level 50

Today, September 5th, I reached another very big milestone in my gaming career. I now own 500 games on Steam! :D

It wasn't very long ago when I blogged about reaching 250. But before you think I'm spending too much on games, most of the games I have bought were on discount. Big huge discounts. Like for example, the recent Steam Summer Sale. Yeah, I too have my bills to pay just like you.

The thing is, I don't have a social life. And being an introvert, I like to be on my own most of the time. So, I usually spend my weekends watching TV show marathons via hotstar premium subscription. But as I have blogged recently, I didn't have internet at home for the past 3 months. During those dark times, playing games was the only thing that kept me from losing my sanity.

I'm not going to make this post boring by writing a review on some of the new games I have bought. You can check out my profile on Steam - [link] anytime and see my games collection. I'll leave the reviews for another post.

Another big milestone I reached today was reaching Steam Level 50!

And not only that, I have managed to craft exactly 50 badges as of today. Very nice coincidence. :)

I feel kinda nostalgic, and quite accomplished to know that I have bought all these 500 games out of my own hard-earned money. It made me recollect all those years when I used to beg my dad or mom over and over again to buy me the latest Nintendo or Sega game cartridge out in the market, and I would throw a tantrum or sulk in a corner if they didn't buy it for me :D

I wish I could go back in time and bitch-slap the young me and say, "Listen son, you wanna play Contra or Mario bros, you better work your ass out. Work hard and years later, you can buy any game you want." and then I disappear in a puff of smoke while Britney's song "Work bitch" plays in the background :P

To keep this post short, yeah to me, collecting and playing different games is important, especially in my line of work. I like playing all sorts of games ranging from Casual to Action to Strategy to Tower Defense to RPG to MMOs to FPS to Simulation and so on (I think the only genre I don't play are car racing games :D ).

What is important is, at the end of the day, it makes me love my work. I don't hate waking up early to go to office every morning or staying back late in office after work. And that is a luxury most working professionals don't have.

So until my next post then, see you all, cheers.

Chp 626. My First 10 Perfect Games

So yesterday, I reached a milestone on my Steam account. I now have 10 Perfect Games! Woohooo!



A "Perfect Game" is when you complete an entire game, while unlocking every single achievement badge within that game. Once you have unlocked all achievements, then you get a "Perfect game" status.

Perfect Games are usually hard to achieve, depending on the mechanics of the game you're playing. In some games, you must play over and over again to unlock certain achievements, while in others you have to do a very difficult combo move and stuff to unlock an achievement. I have played more than 500 hours in "Team Fortress 2" and a few other games, but I am nowhere near a perfect game. And for games like Age of Empires II (on steam), one game analyst even did an extensive research and concluded that you must grind and play every civilization for at least 7000 hours if you want to get a perfect game! That is almost an entire year of continuous gameplay! Whoah.

And of course, there are games where it is impossible to get a perfect game, not because there is one last remaining achievement that is extremely difficult to unlock. In such games, you get an achievement simply for "pre-ordering" the game. Pre-ordering is when you buy a game before it has been launched. And so when you buy the game after it has been released and you play for weeks and unlock all the achievements, there will still be one last remaining achievement you cannot unlock, just because you didn't pre-purchase it. And so, no "Perfect Game". Sucks huh?

Anyway, I hope you get the gist of what a "Perfect game" means now…

Of course there are games where you can easily get all achievements, usually the cheaper ones, but I am not going to include those here. In this post, I want to talk about the 10 games where I unlocked all achievements but at the same time got an immense gameplay experience from. Also, I have included the time it took me to get a "Perfect Game" status, but if you're an "achievement hunter", then don't go by that number because you'll be able to do it much faster, I was just playing it at my own casual free leisure time (and in some cases, I have left the game on pause while attending a meeting).


1. LYNE

Total achievements unlocked: 33/33
Total time played: 19 hours
Game link: Lyne
Cost of game: INR 169

I'm a huge fan of puzzle games, and LYNE hit the sweet spot for me because it was a very interesting game with a minimalistic design. It is a mobile game ported to PC. I had to rack my brains for a long time trying to figure out the solutions. In this game, there are different colored shapes that you must all connect within a given grid, while making sure they don't intersect and at the same time, all paths are utilized. Tough AF.

And the best part is, every achievement is a letter, so once you get them all, you can spell out a name using it :D And since I wanted to use "MIZORAM" in my "achievement showcase" (as you can see in the pic above), I had to freaking play till the last level to unlock "Z",and that was how I got a perfect game from playing this game. Almost 20 hours! Totally worth the money spent.




2. Hexcells

Total achievements unlocked: 6/6
Total time played: 2 hours
Game link: Hexcells
Cost of game: INR 169

Next up is Hexcells. Any Minesweeper fans out there? This is one game you're really gonna love. It is much better than Minesweeper, and you have to think real hard in many scenarios. In this minimalistic puzzle game, there are a couple of hex tiles and you must figure out whether a tile must be highlighted or not based on the clues given. I unlocked all achievements in just 2 hours, and it was a very pleasant experience, especially because of the soothing ambient soundtrack.




3. Hexcells Plus

Total achievements unlocked: 6/6
Total time played: 3 hours
Game link: Hexcells Plus
Cost of game: INR 169

This is the second installment of the above game, and it is as wonderful as the first, though, maybe it's just me, but I felt this version had a lot more of "chance" situations, where the clues given were not enough to determine whether the hex tile should be highlighted or not. But then again, that's a subjective opinion. Completed the game in 3 hours.


4. Hexcells Infinite

What sets this third batch of the Hexcells series a bit different from the earlier two is that it has an infinite mode! And the last achievement to unlock in order to get a perfect game status is to win at least 60 of the 1,000,000,000 randomly generated levels, so yeah, it took me much longer to unlock all achievements, as you can see from my stats below.

Total achievements unlocked: 6/6
Total time played: 5 hours
Game link: Hexcells Infinite
Cost of game: INR 169


5. Hook

Total achievements unlocked: 1/1
Total time played: 2 hours
Game link: Hook
Cost of game: INR 58

Another mobile game ported to PC, this puzzle game entertained me for a good 2 hours. In this game, you must carefully select which line or section goes in first. It is quite simple, but not like "lame" simple. I found it very relaxing and it was worth the $1 I paid for this game. Once you complete the game in about an hour, you will unlock the one single achievement to get a "Perfect Game".




6. Gunpoint

Total achievements unlocked: 42/42
Total time played: 10 hours
Game link: Gunpoint
Cost of game: INR 369

Spent 10 hours on this game, and I just love it! It took me a while to understand the basic gameplay (lack of tutorial), but once I understood how things work, it was amazing playing this game. Gunpoint is a stealth puzzle game where you must steal items and stuff, based on the storyline, without being detected by the cops. And the next mission or story actually changes based on your reply to the conversation (decision-based game). That is why I replayed many missions to get different outcomes. And some of the achievements are really really funny as well. :)

Also, I received a free hat for "Team Fortress 2" because of this game :D




7. Thomas Was Alone

Total achievements unlocked: 35/35
Total time played: 4 hours
Game link: Thomas Was Alone
Cost of game: INR 369

What a beautiful, awesome and relaxing game!!! The story narration is well executed too, and taking that into account along with the ambient music and minimalistic design, I must say this is definitely on the Top 5 of my favorite games. If you really think about it, it is just a simple platformer puzzle game, with basic controls and gameplay. But the sound, design, character and narration turned it into a totally mind-blowing game.

Trust me, I never thought I could get so emotional about geometric shapes before I played this game! :)




8. To The Moon

Total achievements unlocked: 1/1
Total time played: 4 hours
Game link: To The Moon
Cost of game: INR 369

Speaking of being emotional, here is my favorite game this year. I'm not going to talk much about it here as I had already written an entire blog post about this tear-jerking super amazing game - Mizohican: To The Moon. All I'm saying is, if you haven't played this game yet, your loss.

You'll get a "Perfect Game" by completing the game as this game has only one achievement, but trust me, this is not about getting a perfect game status. Just play it and get onboard the Feels train, you won't regret it. 




9. The Purring Quest

Total achievements unlocked: 23/23
Total time played: 13 hours
Game link: The Purring Quest
Cost of game: INR 369

Another very cute and casual platformer game. My only criticism about this game is, the controls are a bit hard using a keyboard. But the story line and ambient soundtrack (which has a very similar "To The Moon" vibe) make up for the hard control system. You play the role of Kimchi the cat, and if you are a cat lover, this is one game you're definitely going to love! As you can see from my stats, it took me quite some time to unlock all achievements. Some of the hidden rooms were really interesting as well.




10. A Bird Story

Total achievements unlocked: 1/1
Total time played: 5 hours
Game link: A Bird Story
Cost of game: INR 299

This is the second game from the people who made "To The Moon" above. Perhaps because the previous game was so great that I wasn't actually impressed with this one. It is the story-based game about a boy who befriended an injured bird. The soundtrack is nice (but not as great as TTM) and there are some funny and emotional parts in the story (again, not as deep as TTM), but it’s a cute game, and I completed the game in less than 2 hours (don't be fooled by the 5 hours given above, this is one of the many games where I left the game on pause while attending a meeting or call conference).




And with that, I now have 10 perfect games. I do recommend all the 10 games above, not just for the achievement part but they really entertained me well.

Until the next update, cheers.

Chp 625. Reliance Broadband - terrible ordeal

From the headline, you can make out this is going to be a rant post. Now I usually don't write such posts on my blog, but the treatment Reliance has been giving me is way past the border of tolerance and understanding.

Yes, there were times I received bad services, be it from a restaurant or an ecom delivery service. But you know, as most Indians, I just shrugged it off. Chalta hai. I'm too busy with other things to waste my time giving a bad review or writing a blog post about it. Plus, it's not like we always get a bad service, so we just sweep such incidents under the carpet.

But what Reliance is doing to me is torture. I'm not talking about a few days or a week or a month of no internet connectivity. It has been THREE months since they stopped giving me net, and the worst part was, they sent their goons, the so called "collection agents", telling me to make payments for the months I didn't have any internet! But I'll come to that later. Here's how my ordeal with Reliance started…

First of all, it took around FIVE months for Reliance to finally give me a connection, after I had already registered and paid the advance and registration fees! You can read more about the pain and trouble I went through trying to get a broadband connection in Pune here - Home is where the Wi-Fi is. Yeah those could be the early warning signs, but if you're suggesting I change my ISP, please read the above link first.

Even after I finally got the connection, there were times I didn't have internet for 3-4 days a month, but hey I'm not complaining about those. I was happy with the 4 mbps connection, it was pretty fast and smooth. And the fact that I took an unlimited plan was perfect for my browsing behavior. For that, I am actually very impressed with Reliance.

The nightmare started in June.

I didn't have internet from 7th June, and like other times, I complained the next day. Complaint number - 246682613. Oh by the way, I have taken down every single complaint number because I like to keep track of things. Before this incident, there's a list of more than 20 complaint numbers.

Finally I had internet back on 13th June.

And then on 17th June my connection was stopped and I complained again.

Complaint number - 246998577

And like before, they quickly solved it and by June 19th, I had internet again.

But that was just one day of bliss. On 20th June, my connection stopped once more, and I complained the next day.

Complaint number - 247111968

And from that day onwards, till today, I don't have any internet!

I complained almost every single day, and I was always told the same thing - "Sir, it is a work in progress".

And if you're a Reliance customer, you'll know the frustrating experience of trying to call up their help-line.

I dial 180030007777.

It will ask for language selection, I type "2" to select English.

It will then ask for what type of service and I type "1" to say it is regarding internet service.

It will then ask for what type of customer I am and I type "1" to say I am an existing postpaid customer.

After that it asks me to enter my customer id, but THAT is always wrong somehow, and so at this section, I just enter 9# (any number followed by the # key) and it will say it is an invalid number (even if I enter my actual customer id followed by # key, it will say incorrect, so it is much faster typing just 9#), and at the second attempt I enter 9# again, and again it tells me it is wrong and finally at the third attempt I enter 9# again. After that it tells me that I have exceeded the maximum number of tries, and then finally forwards me to a call executive.

And that's not the end of it. Once my call is forwarded to a call exec, I'm usually made to wait for around 5 minutes, sometimes even 10-15 minutes, as I am on queue because "all our customer service executives are busy at the moment", while listening to that very irritating and ear-piercing Reliance theme music.

And when a call executive finally does pick up my call, 80% of the time it is somebody who speaks only Hindi, in spite of me selecting "2" (English) in the language option.

Yeah I had to do that almost every night, speaking in broken Hindi about my issue. So you can imagine how frustrated I am with this now.

And I always got the same reply, "Sir, it is a work in progress". And every time I called, I would request a call-back from their engineer to explain to me what exactly was wrong with my connection, and yet I never received a call from their office.

And to rub salt into my wounds, Reliance started spamming me (SMS and inbox) at the end of June asking me to pay my June bill, even though I had connectivity for around 10 days only. I called up the help-line and asked them if I was to pay my bills, would I start having service again, but they said no need to pay because it was still a "work in progress".

And then came the month of July, and the entire month I was calling up the help-line almost every day again, to know the status of my internet connection.

Towards the end of July, I received not just June bill but July bill payment notification as well, even though the connection was still not restored!!!

And then on 30th July, Saturday, somebody rang my doorbell. When I opened it, there were these two huge mean looking guys at my door, asking me why I haven't paid my Reliance bills of two months!! They didn't directly threaten me, but they spoke in a very passive-aggressive tone, like as if I was some wanted criminal. I explained to them that I didn't have internet connection since June, and they abruptly told me that it was because I hadn't paid my bills, and the moment I paid my bills, my connection would be restored.

In my case, this was a chicken-egg conundrum. I need internet to make my payment, but I will get internet only after I make my payment. But I didn't want to argue with those two thugs. I didn't even raise the fact that they told me to pay for the month of July too. I didn't want to be roughened up as I am living alone, so I told them I will then go to office right away to pay my bill online. And then they said I better do that, or they will come back the next day (Sunday) to check up on me again.

Scary unbelievable shit indeed!

This is what I hate about Pune. I don't know any important people here. Back in Bangalore, we used to have Pu HT. Sangliana, who was the Commissioner of Police back then, so he was always there to protect us from such harassments or exploitations. And in Mumbai, I was an executive member of NEHM (North East Helpline Mumbai) with a direct line to many senior police officers, so I had people I could run to for help. But here in Pune, there's nobody I know who can help me out.

And so, on that same Saturday afternoon after the two guys left, I rushed to office even though it was a holiday, logged in to my employee account and paid my two months Reliance bill through online transaction.

I slept a bit peacefully that night.

The next day, Sunday, thank God those two guys didn't turn up again. Just to be on the safer side, I placed a couple of my kitchen knives on my bookshelf, my dining table, behind my TV, etc in case they turned up again and things became unruly. Like I mentioned earlier, those two guys didn't threaten me or abuse me, but I have heard many stories of such "collection agents" from friends, about how they broke a person's leg and stuff, and I promised not to go down without a fight even if I was outnumbered.

Luckily, they didn't come. But unfortunately, neither did the internet. Since it was a Sunday, I assumed I would get back my connection on a working day.

And then Monday came and went. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, all came and went, and still no internet. Whatever happened to that, "your connection will be restored the moment you pay your bills"?

Finally I called up the help-line again, only to be told that my issue was still a "work in progress"!!!

You can imagine how angry I must be right then.

I asked them why they sent those two guys then, and why made me pay for the months I didn't even have internet. The call executive guy nonchalantly replied, "Saar, the amount will be readjusted on your next bill"! Wow, what audacity.

He assured me that my issue was almost fixed (same old excuse), and that my next bill would be calculated and adjusted based on the months I didn't have internet.

Well, August month is now almost about to end, I still don't have internet, and just yesterday, I received the freaking bill for August, asking me to pay for this month as well!!!

This is too much. And I'm sure if I don't pay the above bill, certain collection agents will pay me a visit again? Maybe I'll even end up in a hospital if I refuse to pay this time? Or prison, depending on the outcome of our conflict? How do I get out of this mess? Is it even legal to do this, first of all - not providing service that you subscribed to for 3 straight months, and then forcing people to pay for the service that was not rendered?

In the 1.5 years that I've lived here, I really got to love Pune a lot, but this is one part of my journey I definitely want to erase from memory. It is unpleasant, obnoxious and at best, threatening. Horrible experience indeed. And all my online premium subscriptions to Hotstar, Netflix etc are being wasted every month because of this, not to mention missing the last two episodes of GoT, the entire Olympics, and football matches that I paid extra to watch via online subscriptions :(

I have experienced many bad services across different sectors, but nothing beats this current hell I am in.

And the fact that I am not staying at some isolated locality or upcoming neighborhood but right in the heart of Koregaon Park, a supposedly prime and upmarket area of Pune, and still having to face all these problems truly sucks…

UPDATE 24th Aug: Less than 2 days after I published this post, Reliance called me up, and today their technician came and solved my issue. I now have broadband again after 3 long months, thanks to this post and all your shares. Cheers :)

Chp 624. Reunion Videos

And so that was it. Our batch reunion concluded, and it wasn't easy writing about them! Here are the links and the number of word count for each reunion post I have updated the past 3 weeks -

Chp 619. The Reunion: 1273 words, 19 photos.

Chp 620. Reunion Day 1 + 2: 3529 words, 142 photos.

Chp 621. Reunion Day 3: 2055 words, 175 photos.

Chp 622. Reunion Day 4: 2465 words, 152 photos.

Chp 623. Reunion Day 5 + 6: 1949 words, 50 photos.

That's a total of 11,271 words and 538 photos uploaded!

Dayyymm I should have submitted my thesis or something for that :P

Anyway, enough words have already been said and more than enough photos have been uploaded, so in this post I will just put up two videos, taken and edited by the awesome Stapp, who also played a huge role in organizing our reunion and pumping up different people and finally convincing many of them to turn up for the reunion.

Just enjoy. And cheers :)