A non-customer-service customer service call

I've been a customer of my cable provider in Kenya, Zuku, now for 4 years.
And today I received my first ever "customer service follow up call".

Well that's how the politely spoken lady described it.

It didn't start well and accelerated downhill with alarming speed.

I see a number I don't recognise on my phone.
I gingerly answer with a simple "Hello."

"Hello," comes the reply then silence.
"Hello" I repeat."Yes, Hello, " she insists.

I'm adamant I'm not going to introduce myself first.
I salute her a 3rd time and perhaps then she gets it.

"Hello, I'm calling from Zuku, am I talking to Darren Stanley?"
"Yes you are."
I pause, so does she.  She called me, does she expect a rant?  Does she expect me to ask her questions?  The proverbial penny drops.

"I'm doing a customer service follow up call on your Zuku service."
"Yes, OK." I respond.
Then another awkward pause.  That seems to last forever.....

"How has the service been overall?" she pursues.
"Fine, thank you."

The longest pause of all ensues.
Am I actually taking this call?
Am I a survey guinea pig?
What is going on?!

Eventually, she realises I'm not going to say anything else without prompting or probing.
"Fine - that's good."  Then she stops and pauses again.
"OK," she continues, "Thank you for your feedback."
I interject: "I'm sorry but I have found this call very strange.  Aren't you supposed to ask me questions and probe?"
"Oh, Sir, I'm sorry the line is breaking, I can't hear you...."

In exasperation, I lose my patience: "Forget it, I'm eating my lunch, goodbye."
I hang up.

I know research is my metier, and I don't want to sound disingenuous, but this must be the weirdest most unstructured survey / service call I have ever ever encountered.

I smell a sales opportunity somewhere......

Half way round the world and back

28,500km: that’s how many I’ve done this Festive Season; not on foot of course, and I dread to think about my carbon footprint, but...

Staggering and impressive; an eye-watering 9 flights on 7 different carriers, spanning 3 alliances, 1 budget & 1 non-aligned airlines; visited 4 cities (or towns); and proceeded through passport control on 3 continents.

It wasn’t your average Christmas / New Year break, really.  Thanks to airmiles, however, it was doable at relatively reasonable cost – and booking well in advance (for my Norwegian and BA sectors, at least) saved me a fortune.

My first journey was perhaps the most complicated in the sense that I skipped aboard airlines from SkyTeam, Star Alliance and one world.  But rather surprisingly and definitely welcomed, was the ability at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) with Kenya Airways, to check my baggage all the way to Miri, Sarawak, Borneo, Malaysia – a long list of geo-locations, but I like to be specific. 

I must confess I was a tad sceptical that my luggage would appear at the other end – and since I was headed for a wedding was also rather anxious.  My suit, tie, cufflinks, collar-stiffners and other “wedding accoutrements” could end up at my destination hours or even days after the nuptials had been completed.

But they were there – at the exact same time I was.  Amazing.  Thank you KQ (#kenyaairways).

Baju melayu, samping & songkok

The wedding was a Malay affair with a million blooms, elegant females in hip-hugging frocks and dashing men in baju melayu or batik shirts – a burst of colour, putting Notting Hill Carnival to shame. 

And yet, I was only there for a couple of days before driving to Brunei to catch my connecting flight in Bangkok on Thai Airways to Oslo – yes, you read it correctly, Norway of all places.

Eschewing the balmy C35° of Borneo, I stepped out of Oslo airport to collect my hire car with a brisk C-2° shooting up my ill-prepared nostrils.  They had needed half-an-hour to de-ice and warm up my vehicle and I was glad they had done it.

I grappled with the left-hand drive and manual gears, and headed south on the E6 towards Oslo centre – or sentrum as we say in Norway.

I was in town in about 30 minutes and began to get my bearings.  My parents joined me later that afternoon, so I had a little time to cram in some culture.  The Munch Museum was for me.  The famous and infamous (for being stolen at gun-point back in 2004) painting The Scream was hankered for.

I entered the gallery only to find the canvass I’d braved the Oslo slippery ice-fondant streets for, was being restored.  Bloody typical.  

Screaming for The Scream

Leaving the gallery, after succumbing to the obligatory mug and fridge magnet purchases, I headed back to the airport to collect mam & dad.  I was, unexpectedly, rewarded with a night sky show of the aura borealis – albeit a tad too far south and far less spectacular than in Trondheim or somewhere equally arctic-circle-ish.

Norway was super: great food, charming people, impeccable infrastructure & clinical efficiency.  It was, simultaneously, possibly the most expensive place I’ve been to on planet earth.  Move over Tokyo, Singapore & New York, Oslo will rape your wallet quicker than those pesky Vikings ever did in Northumbria all those centuries ago. 

Still, we enjoyed it – and it’s somewhere I’d love to see in the summer; the snow over Christmas was perfect, crisp and Bing-Crosby-ish – just as it should be.  ;-)

Welcome to the snow

We then proceeded to Cumbria and “home”.  I put it quotations, merely because it’s “real” home – whoops there I go again.  And I now officially have three of them.  Sigh.  Or should that be LOL?!

It was great to see the fells, the lakes, my school-friends, my family and the windmills.  Cumbria is awash with them – and these huge white giants, waving their arms about are a fixture on the landscape – so much so, you hardly notice their whirring purring presence.

 

Keswick and me

Finally, it was off south to the most impressive, fantastic, compelling city on earth: London.

My other half and I were scheduled for a front-row seat for the pyrotechnics to usher in 2015 and we couldn’t wait.  Following dinner, we scrambled outside to brave the plunging temperatures to get a ringside view.  And we were not disappointed. 

Perhaps the brightest, best-coordinated, most raucous show of fireworks I have ever seen burst above the river Thames, reflected in it and reverberated around it.

Whizzes, screeches, whirls, flashes, sparks and more lit up the London sky – so vividly and with such incandescence, you could read your newspaper in the nocturnal luminescence.  Oh, that rhymes – how quaint.

Just opposite the London Eye - eye-watering!

Selfridges, Peter Jones, the King’s Road, Regent Street, Carnaby Street – all saw far too many purchases.  While a theatre treat on New Year’s Day to see the new and provocative production of King Charles III, was especially wonderful.

We ate Italian in Knightsbridge, Indian in Fulham, Chinese in the West End, Gordon Ramsay in Battersea and English fayre in Piccadilly.  Friends and merriment were bountiful and the New Year started with a bang – as it’s supposed to I guess.

As I sit in the First Class lounge at Heathrow, about to travel “home” to Nairobi [thanks (again) to my other half] sipping a beautifully chilled kir royal, I’m thankful in so many ways and on so many levels. 

What a whirlwind Yuletide I’ve had; what a mesmeric hailing in of a new year; what a splendid marvellous cacophony of friends, family, loved ones, experiences and more I’ve had.

Thank you 2014 for being rather splendiferous and watch out 2015 – you have a lot to live up to.  

I rather think you will!

Do they care if it's Christmas?

And the stress on the headline should be "care".  Do they CARE?  Do they *care*?  Do they......-well you get the point, I hope.

I remember the first Band Aid hysteria way back in 1984 - I was a mere 13 and quite ignorant about where Ethiopia actually was and what the issues of food management were back then.  I mean let's be honest, the "dark continent" was a whole world away and bereft of any meaningful input to the world economy - wasn't it?!  I jest (in bad taste) of course - but nonetheless, sitting in my orange and brown living room of the mid 80s with Thatcher on her gilded throne and the miners' strike in full swing, there were perhaps a few hot topics vying for the social conscience of a pubescent teenager.

I didn't buy the single - despite George Michael singing his lungs out and Boy George giving it good face.

I didn't sense the need to donate my pocket money despite the image of flies hovering around the face of young child who hadn't eaten for days being projected every tea-time on our telly.

I didn't (in all honesty) think my 20p or 50p would actually get to where it was supposed to and didn't really think it would make any bloody difference either.

That was then and this is now.

The backlash our dear well-intentioned Bob Geldof (KBE) has unleashed recently with a re-recording of the famous hit in 2014 for West Africa Ebola sufferers is perplexing, understandable, symptomatic and disingenuous all at the same time.

Perplexing because I fail to understand the venom with which people have challenged the whole concept as condescending.

Understandable because the world has moved on and we're more aware; we're more critical; we expect people to do more for themselves and appreciate that actually the vast majority of folks don't want handouts.

Symptomatic of a liberal post-colonial unburdening of guilt that many Europeans feel necessary - often despite and in total neglect of the rather insidious occupation of the continent of Africa by Chinese clamours for natural resources.

And perhaps most disconcertingly, disingenuous because I challenge the critics to offer an alternative, to demonstrate what they have done, or to give credit (however misplaced) where it's due.

We live in an imperfect world with imperfect solutions delivered by imperfect institutions and individuals - but I applaud those who try; lament the fact more people don't try; and challenge those who may read this to try a bit harder.

Fancy a game of marbles, anyone?

The magnificent Parthenon atop the acropolis

Subtitled: how one can change one's mind.

I recall a rather heated exchange with a good Greek friend of mine - and you'll see why his nationality is important in a moment - about repatriation of artefacts and the like that are in museums around the world - as opposed to being "at home".  It ended acrimoniously, sadly, and we both vowed never to raise it again.

When two positions are so far apart it would seem there can be no common ground - the fact that I'd never really researched some of the points I had entrenched views on, didn't seem to matter to me too much.

We were of course, if you haven't worked it out yet, arguing about what the British call the Elgin marbles and what the Greeks tend to call the Parthenon marbles.  I took the position (as perhaps a majority of Brits do) that what happened under the Empire and sense of entitlement is not really our guilt problem and if the "booty" is on view for all the world to see in London, then please feel free to come and visit - but don't expect us to return any of it.

I think for most of what's been "ex-patriated", if I can use that phrase, I would still maintain there is very little benefit to either the original "home" or the new one to move everything back to where it was pilfered from.  I see one of the great benefits of the momentous museums around the world is allowing thousands and thousand of people access to great pieces of history in a safe and protected environment - think British Musuem, Le Louvre, The Hermitage.  

So, as I was in Athens just last week for a birthday celebration over the sea in idyllic Mykonos, I naturally clambered up the acropolis and took an obligatory selfie just on the front door step, as it were, of the Parthenon itself.

Me and the Parthenon - best of friends.

I must confess (perhaps with all major monuments one sees on the telly and in books) the actual temple site was a incy-wincy bit disappointing in terms of its impressiveness.   That said, just look at these pics:

The columns of the Parthenon - and a 21st century crane.

Columns restored after many an incident rendered the whole temple area a bit of a "bomb-site".

After the site tour, we skipped down (at a rather more speedy pace, unsurprisingly, than how we'd gone up) towards the (relatively) newly-built Acropolis Museum.  I was a tad anxious; what would I see; how would it affect my opinions; what is all the fuss about?

Tickets procured, auto-barriers passed, we entered a huge lobby full of pottery artefacts, exhibits and statues; the museum is a glass and steel monument to all things Parthenon.  I hadn't realised, I suppose, that even up atop the acropolis, that all the original statues and friezes had been transported down the hill and replaced with very good replicas.  

Indeed the marvellous female statues here, are not the originals, but they are in the museum below - which didn't, sadly, allow any photos - so don't have any of what was inside.

The statues holding up the Erechtheion - which is a bit ironic - but named after a King and nothing untoward.

There were six of these originally and in the museum (pictured below) you see 5 statues in various states of wear and tear.  The sixth plinth is empty and a tag advises you the missing lady is sojourning in the British Museum.  This was not to be the case for other missing items. 

So as I ventured onto the 3rd floor and a life-size representation of the Parthenon "roof" if I may call it that, is quite different.  The frieze and metopes are there in full splendour.  I turned right out of the lobby area to find the first 1/8 of the frieze and about 90% of this was original marble - in situ and intact.  The remainder was of cast material with notes showing which institution had current ownership.  The British Museum being abbreviated to BM.

I'm there, thinking the Elgin marbles fuss over 10%, really?

I turn the corner to see the west (I think) projection and my jaw drops when I see not 90% marble in place, but 90% plaster and the next corner the same and the next and the next.  The amount of "missing" marble replaced with accurate casts of the same was astonishing.  This wasn't taking into account the great statues missing from the "gables" - huge representations hewn from marble of Greek gods and heroes - absent.

The new (rather amazing) Acropolis Museum - Athens

I realised I'd come to a very slow pace; I was almost wanting to sit down and gape - but the museum-Nazis made sure you didn't sit, slouch, lean or touch anything you weren't supposed to.

So I slowly but surely completed the circuit and headed downstairs for a sobering glass of Greek wine.

I think of myself as being quite resolute in most things - most opinions.  But I must admit, my mind has been changed at seeing just how much was confiscated from one of the most famous hills in the world.  Whether Lord Elgin had permission to take, contractually, whether he should have taken what he did or not, whether the marbles left on that hillside would have eroded or been lost to theft and destruction is perhaps not important now - although I do believe they have been preserved better in the "BM" than they might have been up there amidst a country's strife - and we know Greece has had its fair share of 20th century (and 21st for that matter) strife.

That said, I think the time is right to open the dialogue on "sharing" the treasure.  Should we rotate the treasures and exchange what the Greek museums can offer?  Absolutely.  Should we perhaps think about long term loan - as the Vatican has done?  Certainly.  Could we set a precedent for more open sharing amongst the great museums of the world and allow even more people access to the greatest remnants of history?  Definitely.

I didn't think my mind would be changed before I went to Athens - but it was - and simply because of the scale of the "light-fingered-ness".

Book yourself a flight to Athens and challenge your own views...!

But perhaps the best thing about all this, is I can now revisit the taboo topic with my good friend and we will find that common ground that eluded us.

Az gaan bak yam

(This was written on the 22nd August and being posted now - since I had a backlog of blogs to post....but after the resounding acceptance on the Union - and all that it comes with - following the No vote on Scottish Independence - a wee post about the language of English, as opposed to the wonderfully peculiar peeps south of the border is perhaps rather fitting.)

What is English?  Does it matter to speak and write it properly?

I heard today on the radio – as one does in Kenya where the radio is very pervasive – and actually where it is in most places in the world – anyway, I heard that the 16-year-old-exam grades in England & Wales for English were down (incidentally while maths were up).

I was a member of Miss Fisher’s writing club (Netherhall, Maryport) while I was in secondary school and we mostly learning good writing practices, but I’m not sure I can actually recall anything useful except if you’re writing a business letter, never have the same letter starting and finishing it.

In other words, if one addresses the recipient as Sir, perhaps it would make sense to end “yours faithfully” and if one begins “Dear Darren”, then “yours sincerely” is quite permissible; a rule I’ve followed faithfully ever since.

But in reality, what do we retain from our English classes in middle age – or even earlier in life?

And perhaps, in today’s polarised debate, does it matter?

Dare I posit, that actually, it doesn’t matter how you say it but what you say?  I can feel the blogo-sphere already a quiver with indignation.  Does it really matter that when I tell my good London friend I advise her I’m visiting b@th as opposed to baath?!  We both should (eventually) realise I’m heading off to the city of Bath.

However, I read with despair a few years ago that New Zealand was to accept text-based spelling in written exams; even I, here, will draw the line. 

Or do I?  I remember a rather heated exchange with my linguistics tutor at Oxford on orthographical reform – or how we should spell things, to you and me.

But perhaps it doesn’t really matter if we write, type or text “c u ltr” as long as the interlocutors know implicitly that they will see each other anon.?!  And as language evolves and we allow it to evolve, I’m not sure we can really lament the so-called demise of a language that for centuries has been flexible, inclusive, innovative?!?  That’s the wonder of English.

Let’s leave it to the academics to know the etymology of a word and how “see” comes from German “sehen” and now has been reduced to “c”.

We won’t be able to stop it anyway.  That’s the beauty of language….!

And for those perplexed by the title of this post, it’s in my vernacular dialect (West Cumbrian); it means I’m going back home – which is what I was doing as I wrote this post. 

Learning a good common tongue and learning it well, doesn’t mean one can’t have a dialect or accent.  Do both…!

What a bored game!

A couple of nights ago, I jumped into my 4-wheel-drive and swerved in and out of Nairobi traffic to pick up my very good friend and head off to a fairly remote part of town for a dinner party with a difference.

No, before you get ahead of yourselves, it wasn’t one of those parties.  It was a games night – and I want to be clear here, a board games night.  [tsk tsk]

I hadn’t dusted off and set up my Lord of the Rings version of Risk for about 10 years, and a good familiarising of the rules was in order.  I slipped on my readers and ploughed through the 19 pages of instructions.  Thankfully, I had two co-players equally keen to learn the rules and they both ravaged the booklet after me.

Both of them boys – this will become important later.

We shuffled, split and dealt the cards; we took laborious turns in placing our battalions; we then decided where we might attack. 

[For those who are perhaps not all that familiar with Tolkien, and his elven-world of conflict, if life doesn’t hold a troll, orc or axe-wielding dwarf in it, it’s not really life.]

The Shire, Mirkwood, Rohan, Mordor – and every imaginable piece of Middle Earth in-between was prepared for bloody combat.  And it was at this point, that our four armies were bereft of the females in our group; the baby in the crib whimpered and they were gone.

We boys didn’t give it a second thought, the dice were thrown, the armies sacrificed, the heads rolled and the territories conquered.  But I can’t help feeling our women-folk were bored of our board-pursuits.  Perhaps less killing and more thinking will be the order of the day for our next clash..!  Something like Scrabble or Monopoly perhaps.

And the moral of the tale?

Actually, it’s far more relevant to the world landscape than we might want to admit – think Gaza. 

If there were more women deciding which games we play on the world stage, there might be far less bloodshed, far less conflict and a lot more peace – even if that is while we’re feeding our offspring.!

Why so much independence?

The Cairngorms

This polemic is not about North Sea oil, it’s not about the economics of small countries, it isn’t even about the complex formula contested on all sides about how much Westminster does or doesn’t send north of the English border.  But it is about how I feel incredibly passionately that the United Kingdom is so so much stronger as just that – a Union.

It is in opposition to the alternative of splintered mediocre states of obvious global insignificance that we would inevitably become. 

Do some of my Scots brethren choose to forget how interwoven our two cultures actually are?  Do the almost hysterical arguments of the nationalists convince the level-headed man on the Gaelic street that (s)he is better off jettisoning the bonds that invisibly yet intrinsically give us a common history?

I wonder.  And I think: not.

Glancing ever so briefly back in history, as Elizabeth I was in the final agonising throes of death, the courtly gentry of England & Wales construed to have the “next” male in line plonked on the throne of a combined pre-emptory Union.  It was thus (and not via any bloody conquest) that the seminal Great Britain was born.  (Granted, it took a couple of hundred years more to formalise the whole thing, but the seed was sewn.) 

The Flag of England, Wales, Scotland - Great Britain

And then James VI of Scotland strode southwards simultaneously as James I of England (and presumably Wales – although we don’t hear that said often).

We have for the ensuing 400+ years inter-married, exchanged customs, grown to love and hate almost everything that binds us and separates us.  Our shared and joint monarch seems happier in tartan on the highlands hunting hinds than in a designer frock on a Thames-barge to celebrate her 60 years on the throne.

There is a palpable obsession with our good James VI’s mother – Mary Queen of Scots and the murderous decapitation authorised by Elizabeth I (but oft ignored, supported and possibly carried out by her son).  She was Roman Catholic to her dying head-placing on the block and today Scotland is a paragon of Protestant frugality.  This impressive lady I suspect would have obliged Scotland and the Scots to follow the faith of Rome and imposed it on England also.  The irony is that a free-thinking religion is now a factor (albeit in a secular context) one of the propellants of the independence debates – and had Mary demurred, we may be more oppressed, more unified, more obliging.

But I digress.

A good friend recently pointed out, the contrapuntal nature of this whole debate seems illogical.  And when one thinks about the centrifugal forces that are bringing nations, states, entities together, it is hard not to ponder the point of resisting and insisting on repulsion.

Design for the Union flag without the Scottish saltire.

The EU, ASEAN, the AU, SADAC, ECOWAS, EAC, NAFTA, NATO, EFTA, APEC and the list goes on.  The world is getting more interwoven, more combined, more unified and here, now, we have a debate renting our wondrous isles apart.

Some compare this to the separation of Czechoslovakia or the crumbling of Yugoslavia – but this is not the same.  They were artificial constructs post WWI – more akin to Iraq, Libya and Turkey (with due respect) than Scotland.

Small is beautiful it is said – and indeed it is, and if anyone dares to think that the UK is big is kidding themselves – we’re already a tiny piece of historical snot confined to the Elgar-playing drum-beating nay-sayers of history.  Our influence is fading, our voice is diminished and our veto will not last much longer.  If Scotland were to secede it would not only create a new state with virtually no say in the world, but impoverish what the Union has left in it.

And don’t misunderstand my apparent hankerings for colonial glory – this is not what I desire or seek.  But the UK does have a duty and responsibility to help re-shape the global landscape that it has in the last hundred or so years been instrumental in designing – rightly or wrongly.  

It’s the small things that perhaps, now mere days from the referendum, seem so important; tea-drinking, scones – dropped or not; battling against the rain – even when it’s August; driving on the left; the pound – whether it’s printed by the Bank of England or Clydesdale Bank; a good post-binge sphincter-crunching curry; and a delight in actually not being contiguously joined to the mainland of Europe.

Is it because two great-grandfathers were Scottish, is it because I love a ceilidh (despite not being able to spell it without spell-check), is it because deep down I love an eye-watering yellow and pink tartan?

Perhaps it’s all of that and perhaps none of it.

What I do know is that I want the Union to continue; I want to be proud of the Union Flag; I want my country to over-shoot in its world importance and influence – and we can do that only with Scotland.

We are indeed stronger together.