Monday, October 23, 2006

Happy Eid, and a not so happy night before Eid!

I should start with the happy and joyful thoughts, so to kick things off: HAPPY EID everyone! Kol 3am winto bkhair and 3asakom min 3uwwadoh!!

Now for the 'not so merry and nice' part!! Right after finishing Iftaar today at around 6.30 pm, I decided to write something nice about Eid and SMS it to most of my phone book... I finish picking out the people I wanna send the message to, and I come up with 200 names! (Yeah I know, even I didn't imagine I had 200 people I could possibly wish Happy Eid to).. Back to the topic, I push the send button and the phone freezes for like a minute (That's understandable, after all, it is sending 200 messages in one go)... Then the horror starts!!! I get a "Cannot send to recipient XYZ" 200 times!!!

"What the hell is going on!!!"

I try sending some of them again and I get the same message! I freaked out! Could my line be disconnected? I call the Saudi Telecom toll free number and hear the automated machine saying that my unbilled amount is about SR100, and mind u, my limit is more than 10 times that much, so it can't be that! I keep trying to send and it keeps failing! Then I remembered something!

Every year, our beloved STC's capacity is stretched during the days of both Eids because basically the entire Saudi population is either sending or receiving calls/texts! This happens every year, and after every time, we think to ourselves, surely they'll increase capacity next year to accomodate for the demand... Right!? WRONG!!! VERY WRONG! To cut this story short, I kept trying to send the messages, and it was slooooowly working... By slowly, I mean each message take about 2-3 minutes to get sent! By the time the 200th message was sent, it was 1.30 in the AM!!! I mean what the fuck!? :

I usually use my Mobily service (Another cell phone network in Saudi Arabia), and it was working fine cuz they actually anticipated the rush, but I have 500 free messages in my STC number to use this month, so I thought this would be the perfect time to use them! If I could go back and do this all over again, I'd definitely ditch the free messages for the convenience and ease of Mobily's messages... Ahhhh this, among other things, ruined my day!

P.S. Michael Schumacher (Formula 1) had his last race today before retiring... Although he finished 2nd in the overall season standings, and although he finished 4th in today's race, he gave a fight to remember! He came all the way from last to 4th after his tyre blew up! Amazing race by the best F1 driver ever!! Give a round of appluase to the 'Pele of F1' as Pele himself called him...

Posted by -OT- @ 5:02 AM, with 17 Comments so far!

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