I visted Blossoms yesterday, and picked up a few books.
And that’s what happens when I go there with money.
Author: nigelb
My Banking Woes
I’ve always had a phobia of banks. They kept making me think of a teacher waiting to punish me because I wrote something wrong in one of their precious forms. When I was younger, I had terrible stage fright, that’s pretty much what happens to me every time I have to deal with a bank.
First Payment
Ever since I started working at OKF, I’ve had trouble with my bank, Axis Bank. I’ve received Wire Transfers to my account several times in the past, and never had to do anything. But for some reason this time, I ran into trouble. Axis bank promises “Direct Credit to your Axis account in less than 48 hours” . I’m, of course, willing to give a leeway of 48 hours more. But the last for 3 times, it’s taken 12 days. Transfers are made out on 10th every month and I receive them on 22nd. This was true for both December and January.
The first payment at OKF wasn’t released into my account until I called the call center about 2 to 3 times and logged a complaint. Finally, I was told to contact my branch, who redirected me to the Forex Department. After being transferred around since nobody was sure who was the right person, explaining the entire problem, I finally got transfered to the right person. As soon as I told him my name, he started with “We’ve been trying to contact you.” This was just surprising and out of the blue. My bank has my phone number, email, and home address. How the hell did they try to contact me? Iris Messages? Because, I definitely didn’t get a call, an email, or a letter. I went to the bank because they wanted me to fill up a form. He turned out to be the Deputy Manager in the Forex Department and insisted that the form had to be filled in original and they wanted a copy of my invoice before they released my money. I don’t know if this is what they call Stockholm Syndrome, but I played along in November, December, and January because there were other things happening in my life that didn’t allow me to change banks.
March Incident
A payment was made into my account on the March 1, 2013. Today is March 15,
- I went to the bank on Wednesday, the 13th, to fill up the form, assuming my money would be released then. Except it wasn’t. It’s been 2 full weeks, how are you guys dealing with wire transfers? With carrier pigeons? Because they’d be faster. I’ve checked with my other colleague in India, and he definitely gets the money faster than me. It takes 7 days for him, which is the max he’s seen. I’ve never seen money come into my account any faster than 10 days.
And In Conclusion
I can imagine some of this is part of RBI’s strict control about foreign currency and all that. But seriously? This is just hurting those of us who deal with international transfers on a regular basis for completely legal reasons. First step, I’m going to change banks. As soon as I receive the money for this month, I’m going to walk into an SBI branch and open an account. I’ve talked to a bunch of people and least troublesome bank so far seems to be SBI. And It also helps that they give the best exchange rate. And this morning I’ve been greeting ironic news of Axis, HDFC, and ICICI are being alleged to be assisting with money laundering. I almost thought that was from Faking News.
PS: This post was written in extreme anger. I may end up withdrawing it later, but hell, I had to write it and get it off my chest.
Hello Kobo!
I was in the UK for 3 weeks recently, and I “made the mistake” of walking into a WHSmith bookstore. I still haven’t built up the necessary self-control to walk into a bookstore and walk out without buying a book. In this instance though, I actually did walk out without buying a book. Instead, I bought a KoboTouch. I really had no intention of buying one when I walked into the store, I was only going to look at it. Eventually, though, a combination of a really friendly sales person, reasonable pricing, and common sense won out; and I walked out with the KoboTouch, a case, and a light. Common sense, because I’ve almost run out of space for physical books. It’s been a little over 3 weeks since I’ve bought the Kobo and I’ve read for a total of about 60 hours and finished 9 books. I think I might have a problem 😛
I downloaded a few books from Project Gutenburg, mostly classics, that I wanted to re-read. I hate to admit it, but I ended up pirating a few books too because, some of the books were simply priced too high . I could buy it from Amazon for a cheaper price, but they would be DRM’d. While music is most available to be bought DRM-free, ebooks aren’t there yet. How I wish I could I could compare prices on multiple providers and buy from the one that has the cheapest. I think I can buy books from any provider that sells epubs with Adobe DRM, but I’m yet to risk it. I’m sure over the next few months, I’ll buy at least one book each month. Definitely more often than I used to before I owned the Kobo since buying is so easy.
Mozcamp – Day 0
Hello from Mozcamp Asia! I’ve just gotten back from the welcome event at Mozcamp. It’s been great to meet friends I’ve talked to on IRC or met at last year’s Mozcamp, and make new friends who’re at this year’s Mozcamp!
I was at The Hub today morning after checking-in at the V-Hotel. Top priority today was setting up B2G on my laptop. I messed around with it for hours to finally learn, to great frustration and disappointment, that B2G on the linux desktop doesn’t work on Ubuntu 10.04. I know I can upgrade, but I really don’t want to do that in the middle of a conference. Well, looks like I’m not going to accomplish that Mozcamp Mission until I get home 🙁
Later, I was at the Scape, which is the venue for keynotes and a bunch of us had volunteered to help organize the swag bags. It was great to work with Mozillians and do small things to help with the event 🙂 I was going to head over to The Hub right afterward, but then it started raining quite heavily! Of course, it’s Singapore! We’re going to hit this problem quite a few times over the next few days, it should be absolutely fun! (Although, I hope nobody falls sick). I went right back in and had a long and interesting chat with Mike Connor and Harold about Social API.
At 7, we had the Mozcamp registration and welcome party – an absolutely fabulous time that involved meeting lots of people, eating good food, meeting my Mozcamp buddy (Amy Tsay!), and of course, the country fair. The country fair was a great way to chat with everyone and kind of get semi-familiar about names to faces. Unforgettable moment of the day: Watching Foxeh and Mozillians dance to Gangam style.
PS: I’m trying to write a blog entry for every day of Mozcamp. I may or may not be able to pull this off, but I’m definitely going to be trying!
A Month of Being a Remotee
Since October, I’ve been a remote employee, working for the The Open Knowledge Foundtion. I was nervous about being a remotee and I talked to a lot of my friends who’re remotees at Mozilla. Shout out to ashish, fox2mike, glob, and Unfocused for helping me out. I also enjoyed reading about people who wrote what their team did, particularly, RelEng at Mozilla, shout out to you guys as well! Also, The Oatmeal was right! Although, ironically, I’ve started to wake up unnaturally early after being a remote employee 😛
The biggest fear about working from home were the distractions The most important distraction-killer is a time tracker. We use toggl for timesheeting anyway, and turning off the time tracker when I’m distracted helps. After a few times of doing that, I automatically stop myself when I’m getting distracted. I keep two Firefox profiles, one for work and one for everything else. While I’m working, the non-work profile is closed, so I can’t get distracted. I reward myself with time to look at it when I finish 2 hours of work and take a short break.
Having good communication channels is great since we’re distributed. Every day, our team gets on a stand up call. It’s great to actually hear everyone talk about their and ask for help from the team if they’re stuck. We also have a Campfire chat room and an IRC channel (#okfn on irc.freenode.net); they keep me sane. Seriously. Speaking of sanity, on some days, the Campfire room is just a world of gifs, we’re awesome like that. There’s also the weekly notebook posts to keep track of what folks in other teams do.
Time’s flown by so fast; 10 days ago, I finished a month here! It’s been a fun and busy time!
PS: If you want to work with me at OKFN, we’re hiring for a bunch of positions!