Sunday, January 28, 2007

191sms

I was heading to Fitzroy on the very crowded peak hour tram. As I sat in my seat, the pungent aroma of urea wafted in around me. Phooo-eeey... It was hard to determine where the source was. I looked around. No obvious candidates. Very strange.




I gently leaned to my left and took a little whiff. The intensity was even stronger. Echhh. I slowly leaned back but the intensity did not decrease. Very strange indeed. So I tilted my head in the other direction. The intensity still did not decrease. Hmmm, so it's not any weaker on my left nor on my right. This makes no sense. Then a horrible thought popped into my head. "Ohhhhhh no, it's not possible". I started very discreetly sniffing my clothes. Phew, I thought to myself. It's not me. As I looked up, these passengers across from me were looking at me with an expression best described as sour. "No, no, no", I violently shook my head. "It's not me", I assured them. I think my denials must have been quite convincing cos they all quickly looked away. I had to get off the tram soon after and so never got to figure out who or what it was that was the source of the smell. I hope the fact that the smell remained after I got off would have convinced my fellow passengers that it was not me. I hope the smell remained after I got off. I hope.

Ah well. Anyway, was meeting indecisive Simon for dinner. Half way to the pasta place, he reckons he feels like Indian instead. Now I had heard a lot about Indian Chinese food and how great it was. This is the Indianfied version of Chinese food. I've spoken to many many Indians (from India) and they rave about how great it is. Many Indians. One even ventured to opine that if he had to give up Indian or Indian Chinese, he'd give up Indian food. Quite a call. Now after hearing such consistently high praise from so many varied sources was making me really curious about this food. After numerous enquiries, I finally found one place which cooks this so called Indian Chinese food, in Malvern. "I know just the place", I said. Small problem was that I only knew the name of the restaurant but not the address. And then, a lightbulb moment! Telstra offers a service where if you SMS 191SMS with a command like b banjara vic, it will sms you back with business names with the word banjara in it's listings. I've never used this before(*). So I waved goodbye to my 55 cents and lo and behold, it sent me back the address I asked for. I've never been so excited before. Why? Because I sort of worked on the system last year. Boyd did the b(usiness), p(erson) and m(ovies). I did the sn(ow), w(eather) and su(rf). One of the very rare times where something I do at work (or ex-work, in this case) is actually useful in real life. I is happy. I explained all this in great detail to Simon but he didnt seemed all that impressed. Maybe cos he had to concentrate on driving. Anyway, we found the place no problems at all. It's near the train lines, cnr Glenferrie and Dandenong Rd.

Piece of trivia. Did you know that beep when you get receive an SMS is S M S in morse code? You did? Gee, I must have been the only person on earth who didnt know that. Disclaimer : AFAIK, it's like this at least on the Nokia phones.

How was the food, I hear you ask? I'll write a review of the meal at WDCoF soon. When I brush up on my adjectives, that is. Till then. Oh yeah, if any of you would like to be part of the WDCoF motley crew, let me know. We have low (actually, no) standards.

Viral marketing? What's that?

(*) OK, technically I have, in the lab. But I've never paid my own money to use it before.

24 comments:

M said...

public transport stinks in so many different ways ;)

Anonymous said...

Yay! It is Chai! Chai is here!

I had no idea about the SMS thing. So I told my mum, thinking maybe you and I were the only people in the world who did not know that, and mum said she didn't either.

Except then she pointed out that she can't even send an sms, and considering my fingers pretty much have RSI from over-smsing - I felt even more stupid.

Maybe the smell was coming from someone's shoes...

Chai said...

m : PT seems to be worse since the new year. I had a shocker the other day. A sequence of missed trains and trams breaking down. Makes me glad I've the choice of cycling to work.

Hiya Rosie, Yes I am still here. I struggle to put out 1 blog per month. :-(

The smell is was not a shoe smell. It was a urine smell. Very strong.

Chai said...

Actually, before anyone goes and embarrasses themselves with the SMS quote, it is actually on Nokia phones. Not sure what the other models/makes do.
See here.

Jay said...

Oh man, this is making painfully hungry at the very inconvenient hour of 4 am.

ChickyBabe said...

That reminds me of a similar incident last week. I just had to find out who it was. Once the little old ladies in front of me left the bus, I could breathe again.

gigglewick said...

The boy who sat in front of me in Grade Six smelled like rotting meat. All the time.

It was gross. To this day I don't understand why none of the teachers never raised it with his parents (fear of retribution?)

GW

kiki said...

maybe it was your seat??

maybe you were sitting in pee?

Chai said...

jay : 4am? Go to bed, young lady.

cb : I guess there is little one can do except move seats. Which might not be easy. I have moved train carriages once. I think this old guy shat himself.

ggw : grade 6? Wow... poor kid. I can imagine the teasing. Stinky Sullivan.

kiki : Never occurred to me. Good thinking.

Husky Nutmeg said...

Bloody 'viral marketing' - lets introduce another in-your-face-here's-some-useless-information-you-didn't-want-rammed-in-your-face kind of marketing - at least it is aptly named.

The business look up thing, on the other hand - clever and useful. And if you want it, you'll use it.

That was a good read Chai. Happy New Year.

sarah said...

you have trams!

'tram' is a great word

we have 'death taxis' here... actually they're only called 'taxis' but we like to be informative in our slang.

good times

Susanne said...

Well I didn't know that about the SMS noise either Chai, so that makes two of us.

I don't know what it says about me (or society in general) that I get all excited when I hear the sms noise. Just like Pavlov's frickin' dog.

Hope you enjoyed Laura Veirs. I didn't make the concert, but I did buy 'Year of Meteors' recently and I'm digging that a lot.

Chai said...

hn : A good read eh? Thanks for the ego boost. :-)

sarah : I'd was going to say some Afrikaan words here but I forgot to ask the guys at work any non-rude Afrikaans.

suss : Have a fantastic and safe trip! Laura was a little disappointing live. Still really like her CD though.

sarah said...

its amazing how many people overseas have afrikaans people working for / with them!

daardie afrikaners moet engels praat! hulle moenie die taal vir julle praat nie ... or else what will the afrikaans spy guys do?

;)

Helen said...

And then you go overseas and try speak Afrikaans among yourselves for privacy and the whole world answers you in afrikaans!

I've only been on a tram once. It was fun! I've never been in a death-taxi before, but I encounter them often...

Chai said...

Dear Afrikaaners, Tis funny!

Steph said...

So that sms thing really works? How about that.

Chai said...

Did you try it, Steph? Now the guys are *really* going to be confused. A real user! :-)

Justine said...

I didn't know that SMS morse code thing.
(Anything like Monty Python's Flying Curcus doing Wuthering Heights in semaphores?)

Justine said...

Hey, what is RSS?

Jay said...

No more armpits!
Give us something new!

Chai said...

just : did a little blurb on RSS on your blog.

jay, jay, jay, I think I have writers block. I am mighty flattered though. The only person I know that looks forward to me writing something is my accountant (when I print his name on the cheques I write out).

Me said...

Oh my, not nice! At all.

Justine said...

you're so right, its a godsend. Silly I had forgotten about it...
I remember you discussing it AaaaAges ago cos someone was asking you for help with something, and I thought maybe one day when my life wasn't so overWHELMing I might look into it.
And here I am!