I wrote this post a while ago before my impending trip to Canada. I often rant about the inept service industry back home only to be silently reminded that the customer is not treated any different here either. Below is my phone conversation and my follow-up rant. Let’s hope I am not deported for my rant.

Excerpt of my call to the US Consulate in Canada

Welcome to the US Consulate Services Live Representative Call Center. Your call may be monitored for training purposes. If you are calling from the United States you will be charged $1.59c per minute. (why am I being charged this fee?)

Please have your credit card information with you. Your card will be charged a $35 flat fee and adjusted according to your actual talk time. (they did charge me a sum of money for taking 2 minutes of their time and for not giving me any answers.)

(after keying in your credit card information you are immediately connected to a live person who asks for a reference number and passport information)

She: When do you need an appointment for?

Me: September

She: Umm sorry but there are no appointments for Septmeber. You’ll need to check back again.

Me: When can I check back?

She: Well it would be best for you to go back the website and refresh the calendar every 10 minutes.

Me: Every 10 minutes? Why?

She: Since appointments are added everyday for 8 weeks in advance.

Me: Is there a particular time I should be checking the site?

She: No, there is no set time. Appointments and cancellations are arbitrary but I think they are supposed to add an appointment availability today. So check every 10 minutes.

All I am thinking is after 2 hours of trying to fill an online form, pay fees for nothing gained, I am told that I need to check back a site for availability every 10 minutes.

Without going into too much detail I am sharing my own frustrations with a system that sucks in every way. Try filling a form online at a US Consulate site abroad, either you face errors or no explanations about what errors are. Form fields are ambiguous and there are no guarantees about the submission. So even after you have gone through an ordeal of filling out a very complex form there are no cues to inform you of what’s next.

In the past I have traveled to my home country and worked through details. Yes the process was cumbersome and the form extremely unusable. The overall experience of standing in long lines at the Consulate and being herded like cattle by your very own people is  humilating but all this pales in comparison to my experience in booking an appointment in a First World country.

On my way to India I was stranded for over 12 hours on the runway due to bad weather. So what was to be a 4 hour flight turned out to be a 12 hour nightmare with a detour to another airport and 200 passengers just waiting to get home. While I can talk about the pains of being couped up in an aircraft with no food and small doses of water, I found reprieve and inspiration in WNYC’s Radio Lab podcasts that I had downloaded as a last minute effort to keep me company on the long haul. While podcasts have been gaining popularity around the world, I am a late adopter of this media. In fact I am a new podcast fan ever since I discovered the Radio Lab series. What Radio Lab does well is content and delivery, two key ingredients often lacking in podcasts. The content is intriguing and thought-provoking and the voices behind these series have a great style that keep you engaged for the 30 minute shorts. Each series is further broken up into 5-7 minute features that cover one aspect of the overall theme. My all-time favorite is the “Musical Language” series that breaks down music as a language spoken around the world. My favorite line “Music is touch at a distance” is what threads each feature into this podcast.

Download these podcasts

Every once in a while I am silently reminded of this thing called life. While I keep my instrospections away from public domain, this time I feel compelled to write, and forget that my life is compartmentalized into personal, public and private.

A father, a sister, a brother, a daughter – four deaths that have touched me in the last 4 weeks. Each week bringing a new wave of sorrow. Four incidents unrelated yet connected through me. I sense their pain and their loss yet there is nothing I can do. I continue to live my life the same way, just aware that there is life and there is this unexplained thing called death.

My work revolves around solving information problems and bringing meaning to information. Annotations are the lifeline of explaining these information islets with the goal of simplifing the blob. Emotions are high and patience a virtue and I sometimes forget that tied to every information problem is the sound of the beating heart.

And so I am reminded that outside the information microcosm that I am so consumed with, there is the meaning of life that I will never solve or comprehend.

With the recent recall of Mattel toys, I am sure every parent lives in fear of what next. While China is obviously trying to cope with the recent flak and corporations are stepping up their quality control, here is an innovative idea that helps parents take control of their children’s safety. Rick Klau launched Safertoys.org to help parents and people in general track and submit stories on unsafe toys – ala digg style.

Ever thought about capturing the infinite universe of changing information in a computer program? See this unbelievable attempt to capture present day mythology.

Jonathan Harris is the mastermind behind this visualization. Part visual designer, part anthropologist, part artist, part storyteller, Jonathan has a body of work that is often my source of inspiration. As I watched this new applet transforming gobs of infinite data into finite visualizations, I was fascinated at how he uses technology to tell a story.

His philosophy of passive information gathering is an interesting concept, especially when I am building interaction models based on contrived forms of user feedback. Passive information gathering as Jonathan says is about living life, while what you say or do on the web is captured without your knowledge.

Data then is real and spontaneous helping create richer experiences within the web sphere. Universe is one example of that richer experience.