Hot And Bothered

It's been unusually and persistently hot lately, and I'm trying not to complain. I'm more than happy to bake on the equator rather than shiver in northern climes, and it somehow seems ungrateful to start moaning when the sweat runs freely. But there have been moments, more than a few, in recent days, when I've found myself aching for a stiff, cool breeze.

When we were Melaka on Monday afternoon just stepping out into the compound from Mak's house was an act of bravado. I honestly can't remember it ever being as hot as that before. And today we found ourselves bussing it around the island, the car being in for an epic service, seeking out air-conditioned area in which to dry out. We got quite a few things done on the business front, yet I didn't feel much sense of achievement, other than being mildly happy to keep going without bursting into flame - too damp, I suppose.

Unfortunately my generally phlegmatic attitude towards life, the universe and everything, found itself dramatically fraying in the late afternoon after I tried to pay for the servicing of the car on a credit card that the company providing (DBS, to name the guilty men) had managed not to 'activate' despite me having gone to the bank, a ridiculously crowded one, with a ridiculously slow-moving queue, at the turn of the month to perform said activation. The young lady representing the guilty men, attempting to assist me in the course of a phone call undertaken to resolve the quandary, fulsomely apologised, but quite clearly was not authorised to do the activating unless all the steps of the process involved had been undertaken. As I pointed out, I had done everything I should have done and could have done quite some time ago and it was odd to tell me I had to do it all over again when it was their end of the process that had failed, and spectacularly so.

Sorry to say, I gave the poor girl on the line a hard time when it obviously wasn't her fault. But that's the thing these days about dealing with all these big companies. They ring-fence themselves with helpful young people doing the phones, and these poor souls are the ones who get the earfuls their bosses should be lining up for. Something similar happened last week when we had to ring Singtel about their Internet service failing for the umpteenth time in the last three months. A guy who helped us get back on-line got blasted because there was no one else around to tell that it was ludicrous for us to having to be ringing a technician in the first place. 

And now it's time to cool down after this little rant, even though I'm still sweating.