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Fortune from dinner at Mary Chung's
I spent most of the afternoon on the phone trying to make travel arrangements. So far, I have a ticket to and from Tokyo. Getting from Tokyo to Asahigawa and back seems to be beyond the capacity of any of the internet airline ticket services and American can't do that part of the trip with frequent flyer miles. Sigh. So I have a free ticket to Tokyo all set and on its way to me in the mail. Now all I need to do is contact the travel agent for the rest.
That proved easier said than done. Many phone problems. As one of my brothers said shortly after deregulation: "Telephoning in the US is rapidly approaching the level of Mexico". He did not mean that as a compliment.
First I tried the 800 number. No good. Blocked from my area code (supposedly). Then I called directory assistance and got the local number. It gave fast busy all afternoon. Very odd. Finally I e-mailed them after some detective work on the web. The web master claimed the 800 number is blocked from the 617 area code. But I'm not in 617, I'm in 978 and it shouldn't be blocked. Oh well. Also the web master was astonished about the busy signal - apparently this particular travel agent has just loads and loads of incoming telecomm capacity.
It's gotta be the area code change. I mean simply changing the name of the company from Nynex to Bell Atlantic shouldn't cause the phones not to work, should it?
After a long afternoon of this, I met a friend in Central Square for dinner at Mary Chung's. I hadn't been there since Cosmodemonic moved to the suburbs. My one lasting memory of Mary Chung's is when I was the director in charge of dinner one night during a frantic release (management took turns providing dinner for the team every night). One of the engineers complained that I always got the Chinese takeout from Royal East and he demanded that I get it from Mary Chung's and that I allow him to order it. This being about my zillionth night on dinner duty, I told him to go ahead.
I took the project leader with me to pick up the food, figuring I'd need help carrying it. Besides, it was after dark and Central Square at night was not then a great place to be. We arrived at Mary Chung's. Our co-worker had ordered about $200 worth of beef dishes. Mary Chung does not take credit cards. I was glad to have Stuart along to accompany me to the ATM to get cash for this. We bonded for life around this experience. I paid cash and Stuart and I lugged the food back to my car cursing the fellow who didn't tell us Mary Chung didn't take credit cards.
I served the food in the conference room to the disapproving complaints of 30 or so hungry engineers who did not appreciate their co-worker's menu choices. We never ordered from Mary Chung's again.
I told this story to my friend over dinner and we had a good laugh over it.
Then off to the WA meeting and then home to the demented orange wacko and an unresponsive ISP. I'll have to upload this tomorrow. This is a local call so it can't be the area code change that is causing world not to answer. Sheesh. My brother is right, our phone system is rapidly approaching the state of Mexico's.
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