Another Day, Another Mission

Yesterday I discovered that my laptop wouldn’t power on.  I remained calm, but my stomach sank as I pondered what I would do.  I purchased a MacBook intentionally because I wanted the most glitch-free device while in India, knowing that once I was here it would be difficult to procure service and that I would be more prone to virus threats which Macs stand up to better than PCs.  Good thinking, Jess.  Smart girl.  But I’ve since come to learn that Apple products are not popular here in India, therefore, sales & service centers are few and far between, in the off-chance that I’d need service.  After an Internet search (on my phone) I learned that there was no such place in the entire state.  But there was a business in Kochi (2 hours away by road) which claimed to repair Apple devices.  I called and made plans to come the next day (that’s today).  This post isn’t about technological issues.  It’s about getting things done in India, which is very different from getting things done in the USA.  Add being a foreigner, and it gets a little messier even.  

So I got a text from Maneesh from the IT shop in Kochi with the address.  Some random address in some random place.

I don’t know Kochi at all.  I know it is where the airport is.  An airport I have used three times now.  Each time, I’ve rented a car to or from the airport so I’m not familiar with how to get there by train or bus.  It’s a bit pricey to rent a car and this time I couldn’t justify the expense so I decided to take a bus.  Conveniently, I could catch a bus at my usual bus stop near my house, my roommates said.  Supposedly they come every few minutes.  

So this is what the journey looked like today.  First, I wish I could describe what it feels like to put one foot in front of the other not knowing really how you’re getting to some vague place.  I wasn’t even sure which side of the road to catch the bus on (meaning, which direction Kochi was in).  I can blame that on my poor sense of direction and attention to detail over many months.  So setting out of the house, I felt timid and humbled by the task in front of me.  I walked to my bus stop.  Success thus far.  Actually, by the time I gathered the energy to ask a stranger for help identifying a bus to Kochi (the labels on the buses are in Malayalam which uses an entirely different script I cannot read), I had missed one bus that would’ve gotten me there.  But soon after there was another.  When I asked if it went to Kochi, I got some positive body language (I think) and people said it went to Ernakulam.  To the best of my knowledge, Kochi and Ernakulam are kind of twin cities.  So, I figured, good enough, and hoped for the best.  As I settled into my seat, I felt like I could relax for a good hour before I had to devise a strategy for knowing when to get off the bus.  After that relaxation period, I started looking at google maps on my phone to see my gps location in relation to the google map of the shop.  (Yes, this entire post indeed showcases how much of a spoiled American I am with my tech devices.)  I eventually determined roughly where I would get off.  Not quite yet.  But soon.  But then the bus money-taker guy comes to me and tells me to get off the bus.  I guess I had to?  Was it the last stop before turning back?  Well, close enough.  So I got down.  Dodging oncoming traffic, I made my way to the side of the road.  “Here I am at some random place in India again,” I thought.  I experience this acknowledgement often.  I found a row of auto-rickshaws and showed the drivers my text from Maneesh.  They discussed I-don’t-know-what and then one of them said “come” and we began our journey.  He eventually stopped and said “wait” and left me in the auto-rickshaw.  It seems he was asking others where the building was located.  When he came back, I called Maneesh so the two could speak.  They did.  We had arrived at the correct building, as an open window seemed to indicate according to a gesture by my driver (ah yes, yes of course), so I say farewell to the driver and find my way up to the third floor (which they call “2nd floor”).  Phew.  I made it.  The process of finding a specific location in a random-seeming place with zero sense of direction definitely causes me to respect time and space, as well as to realize just how abstract these concepts are.

It definitely wasn’t an Apple service center but it looked as legit as anything here.  I met Maneesh who was seemingly apologetic from the get go but I was confused for a minute.  Hadn’t we talked and he said he could fix my laptop and I had successfully made it to his shop?  What was I overlooking?  Oh, the power was out.  For the entire day, apparently, he explained.  Maneesh said that this very rarely happens for an entire day.  He spoke with his employees in Malayalam while I conjured ideas of hijacking Maneesh in an auto-rickshaw to a hotel or some place with a generator where he could work on my laptop.  I wasn’t ready to admit defeat quite yet (and I’ve learned here that defeat presents itself quite easily and it’s compulsory to not settle at the first roadblock).  I soon gathered from their discussion, however, that there was some limited power source that he could use to test some basic functions with.  Someone came back with a small black box.  We plugged my laptop into it.  Nothing.  We tried another power cord.  Nothing.  Maneesh said that it was not a cord or battery issue, but a motherboard issue which will take a few days to work on. It wouldn’t be done today.  Whut.  Do I leave my laptop with these people at this random place in India?  Did he really do a thorough diagnostic investigation?  Well, thanks to my friend James who sent me a link to the trouble-shooting page on the Apple website, I noticed that they had not tried a few of the recommended procedures, so I asked them to unscrew and open up the laptop to take a look inside.  <Unscrewing is another story.  I had intended to do this myself at home yesterday but that entailed taking a bus into town to ask around at optical shops for a teeny screwdriver, which I managed to finally purchase, only to realize at home that it still didn’t fit the screws on my laptop. Yesterday’s mission: failed.>  Maneesh and crew obliged.  I had suspected ants in the computer as I’m often flicking them off of my keyboard.  But it appeared nice and clean inside.  I then asked them to unscrew the battery and put it back in.  They did.  These steps seem a little bit like the old bang-the-side-of-the-TV game but who was I to question the official Apple troubleshooting techniques?  Just as the banging tends to have magical efficacy, the battery-in-out trick also worked.  Ha!  Hooray!  Power was restored!  I didn’t have to leave my laptop in a random place in India on planet Earth unsure of how to re-navigate my way back to the place (which I never would have done, actually, as I was prepared to face not using a laptop for the duration of my time here versus leaving it).  I ended up buying a new power adapter and was on my way again.  

When I asked Maneesh how to catch a bus back to my city, he said to ask an auto-rickshaw driver for “hub.”  It was actually “_____-transit-hub,” a title involving some word in Malayalam I was not catching.  So Maneesh assured me that I could just say “hub.”  I found an auto, asked for “hub,” asked a hub station manager for my bus when I got there, and then a nice young woman pointed me directly to my bus which was so kindly waiting for me with plenty of empty seats.  I found my spot and settled in, determined to reward myself for the day’s toils by stopping to purchase a pineapple when I got back to town, which I did.  Seriously, the pineapple here is like nothing your mouth has ever enjoyed before.  I feel sorry for your mouth.  

The end.  

Oh, except to say that I’ve pondered this notion that everyone around the world believes that Americans are so “go-go-go” busy and I believe that, yes, it’s true that we are a bit restless and on the move to accomplish our daily tasks but you know what?  It’s so eeeeeasy!  You would be all “go-go-go,” too, if everything were so straight-forward and precise.  If you could accomplish half the day’s tasks via email or phone rather than random drop-ins at strange offices with non-existent lines (ahem, “queues,” I mean).  And if it weren’t so deathly hot that sweat was dripping from your sternum over your bellybutton while merely standing in place, in the shade, for your bus.  And if you could zip from point A to B in your car through orderly traffic.  And if you had numerical addresses which your GPS could identify exactly.  Just sayin’.