My mad day

What a morning I've had. Most amusing I tell you. Murphy's Law gets proved again and again. Talk about last minute f***-ups

My passport was supposed to arrive today by courier. Got a call from my mamoo and mumani because they wanted to take me out for lunch to celebrate. Sounded good. So I said I was all for it. Now I get a call from USEFP at 10 am that they're emailing me a doc that I need to print, sign, copy, and send original back to them today by courier so that it reaches them tomorrow by ALL means. Normally this would not be a biggie. But my damn printer is in repairs and won't come back till after Eid. I had a brainwave. There's a printer at my mom's school. Called her up and it turned out they had a printer but their Net was down so I couldn't mail to them. They said I could come with the doc on a USB drive and print it there. But I couldn't leave the house at the time because the passport was due and nobody else was home. I figured if it got till past school-hours I'd copy the thing to a USB drive, head to nearby market (Bahadurabad for those of you who know Karachi) where I could get it printed, copied and TCS'd. No biggie. One short rickshaw trip once I got back from lunch. So nerd that I am, I tried to get my rickety old printer working while I waited, thinking it might save time later.

This involved getting a stepladder, climbing up to a cupboard in my room and getting out the bulky old printer. Then I had to find cables. Turned my room upside down. Found a cable, hooked up one end to the PC but the other end wouldn't fit in the damn printer. Tried to force it in and got a small electric shock for my troubles. Then realized that this was the wrong cable :D. Turned my room upside down again. Found the right cable. Then found power cord. Hunted for driver CD, found it (by this time my room looked like WW2), inserted it, got error saying driver is incompatible with Windows. Went to HP site, looked for driver, was told that Windows already has the printer driver so I don't need to download anything, bashed my head into table in sheer frustration. Stuck in a piece of paper, tried to print a test page. Damn machine refused to take the paper in. Took ten tries and I finally had to practically spoon feed the paper into the printer before I got a good test page print-out. Happy I was. I printed the first page of the doc and was immediately less happy. Damn thing was out of ink so all the lines had no top halves. Switched off the printer.

Was getting somewhat late and TCS usually delivers around 11 am so I was freaking out a little bit. All kinds of doomsday scenarios started forming in my head. What if they send it to the wrong address? What if they've lost it? What if the somewhat stoopid chowkidaar has told them I'm not home? (this has happened before). At noon I called my mamoo and explained the situation to him, expressing my regrets that I would be unable to attend because the passport wasn't there yet and nobody else was home. He understood completely and said that we'd go another time and I was making absolute sense by taking a rain-check. So at 12:45 pm I called USEFP asking what would happen if I wasn't here when the thing arrived. They said something to the effect of "they often give it to a family member but its better that you're there". Got the TCS tracking number from them. Checked the TCS website. It said "in transit". Mumbling stuff like "WTF is this crap?" I called the TCS helpline, put on my best distressed female English accented voice (incidentally, this isn't very hard for me to do and has helped me in the past with these jokers), and told them I was concerned because my passport hasn't arrived yet and the website says "In transit". I was assured in soothing tones that "ma'am courier nikal gaya hai, aap ka passport abhi kuch dair mein pohonch jayega". So I waited. Sure enough around 2 pm the thing arrived. Very thorough the courier was. Took my NIC number and everything. Made sure the passport was in fact mine, that a visa was stamped in it (it looks rather nice I noted in passing... very colourful) and that required stuff was attached. Then called USEFP and told them that it had arrived. They were relieved too. I think they had been freaking out to some extent as well cause Eid holidays start tomorrow and a non-delivery scene would have been messy.

Right... so the passport was out of the way now. Too late to get to ammi's school. So it had to be the market. I opened my wallet and I had a 1000 rupee note, a few coins, and nothing else. Ever tried giving a 1000 rupees to a rickshaw driver? Hahaha. So I called ammi and asked her how far away from home she was and if she had change. She had change but she was pretty far away. I figured I'd prepare things in the meantime. Copied the doc to my little USB drive, my big USB drive, and even burned a CD for good measure. Checked all of them to make sure the doc opened. Got hold of an envelope, wrote the address on it, put everything into a bag, changed my clothes, fixed my hulia. Was all set. Ammi was still not home though. Then I realized I needed credit for my cell. I remembered the petrol pump nearby and figured they'd give me change if I bought something from their store. So sprinted over there. Wanted a 500 rupee card but he had only 100 rupee cards... bought 5 of those :D and a snickers bar to ensure that he'd give me actual change and not a 500 rupee note. Now I had change. Called ammi up and told her to relax and that it was under control. Hung up. Then remembered something. Called her again and told her not to let the masi into my room under ANY circumstances. Every single cupboard was open, half my possessions were scattered all over the place and a masi in this volatile mix could only have made things worse. She wasn't amused about this unseemly lack of cleanliness on my part... hehe but she agreed.

Then got rickshaw, reached the market, got the printout, signed it, got two copies made (I only needed one but made two for good measure) and got to TCS (all in the same market). TCS guy said normal delivery won't reach Islamabad tomorrow because tomorrow is a holiday. I cursed a bit and asked him how much urgent holiday delivery would cost. Turned out it was more than twice the normal cost. But it had to be done. Insignificant in the grand scheme of things and all that. So I forked over the money and got a rickshaw back home. All's well that ends well, except that now I need to clean my room. But I may as well make use of that Snickers bar first :D