Teaching Dad computers

On that particular day, I was starting for office. I had my bath, and walked into my room to choose my dress for the day.

Now our computer is in my room, and at that point, Dad was using it, transferring photos from his camcorder. While I was choosing my dress for the day, my dad remarked that though he had transferred the photos to the computer, he was not able to view them and called for my help.

Still choosing my dresses, I asked him whether he had done every step correctly. He insisted he had. I asked him to open the folder he had specified as the destination folder. He already had it open and showed it to me. Sure enough, the new pictures didn't seem to be there.

I scrolled down the window and found that the images were added to the folder, but Windows had not sorted the view after addition. I pointed this out to my dad, saying that the files were shown at the bottom of the view - they had been transferred, but Windows did not do a sort and that was the reason he did not see the files where he expected them to be.

"But it usually arranges everything in the specified sort order!!", he insisted.

"Maybe you should refresh", I said.

"How do I refresh?", he asked.

Now I have explained how to do a refresh many times to my dad, but he being he, asked this question again.

"Press F5", I said, and walked over to the wardrobe to continue my dress-selection-process.

"Not working", came the voice of dad.

"It will work, dad!!" After all the files are already there; all it has to do is refresh - how can it not work?

"No, it doesn't!!"

I walked over to the comp, and ask him to press F5 again. This time, I keenly watched what he was actually pressing. He pressed the 'F' key and the 'I' key. What I mentioned as "F5" fell on his ears as "FI".

"No dad!! Press F5!!"

"That's what I am doing!!"

"No dad!! Press F5!!", I said, this time emphasizing the "5" part.

"Oh ok, F5!!" he said, and pressed the 'F' key and the '5' key.

"No dad!! Press the F5 key at the top!!", I said, and for good measure, point out the key.

"Oh this one!"

He presses the key, and this time, the files are displayed all fine.

In a conference call...

In my previous company, we were developing an application for a Japanese client. One day, we were supposed to call up our coordinator at onsite. My team leader asked me to go ahead and place the call while he would join me a few minutes later.

I placed the call, and after a few rings, someone began speaking in Japanese.

I was stumped, since I was expecting our coordinator to pick up the call. But then I realized it could be a common number, and that the person speaking right now was probably a receptionist. I waited for him to finish, after which I thought of asking him to transfer the call.

But he didn’t. He continued speaking.

After a few minutes of this, I said, slowly in English, “Hello. Can I please speak to <coordinator name>?”

No response. Receptionist keeps speaking.

I try again, but this time, just repeat the name of the coordinator, in case he did not get what I was speaking.

Still the same.

Finally, I call up my team leader and tell him that someone is just speaking on and on in Japanese.

He said, “Keep the receiver down. Its voice mail”.

Hmm...

I have been doing a lot of late nights recently. This has taken a toll on me so much so that when I exited the lift today, I heard it say, "The time is now 12pm. Have a night stay." It was a while before I realized that it actually said, "Have a nice day."

Great wedding ideas...

Krish Ashok has a lot of funny, downright hilarious ideas on how a Tamil Brahmin wedding could be conducted. Take a look.

Note: You need to be a little familiar with the way Tamil Brahmin weddings take place.