Wednesday, August 25, 2010

The Story of Mobile Phones

A few years ago, when 3G mobile phones were first launched in Australia, my daughter Veronica and I bought two 3G mobiles from a mobile phone shop in Chatswood. We were issued two 3G mobile phone sets (silver for me and red for Veronica) and two mobile phone numbers (04xxxxxxxx for me and 04yyyyyyyy for Veronica). As Veronica was still studying in university at that time, I grouped these two mobiles into one account under my name, and the monthly usages went into a single bill sent to our registered address in Sydney:

Sydney bill




John phone set – silver

Veronica phone set – red


John phone no. – 04xxxxxxxx

Veronica phone no. - 04yyyyyyyy


A/C name - John



The 3G phones were great. The network coverage was good. We were quite happy with the 3G mobile phone services.
Came 2007. Veronica graduated from College, found a job in the Government and relocated to Canberra. I thought it was appropriate time for Veronica to look after the usages of her mobile phone, and pay for her own bills. So we went to the mobile phone shop in Chatswood to request splitting the mobile 04yyyyyyyy to a separate account under Veronica and a separate bill to be sent to her registered address in Canberra. The salesperson asked us to fill in the necessary forms, and said the update would be made in a week's time.
In the following month, we received phone bills as follows:

Sydney bill

Canberra bill



John phone set – silver

Veronica phone set – red

John phone no. – 04xxxxxxxx

Veronica phone no. - 04yyyyyyyy

A/C name - John

A/C name - John


As we saw that the bill in Canberra was still under my name, we went to the mobile phone shop in Chatswood a few weeks later to ask for correction. The salesperson explained that the error might be due to the fact that the mobile was split from my original account under my name. They could just simply update the account name from John to Veronica. So we filled in the necessary forms, and were told that the update would be made in a week's time.
In the following month, we received new phone bills as follows:

Sydney bill

Canberra bill



John phone set – silver

Veronica phone set – red

John phone no. – 04xxxxxxxx

Veronica phone no. - 04yyyyyyyy

A/C name - Veronica

A/C name - John


As we saw that the account names were interchanged, we went to the mobile phone shop in Chatswood again a couple of months later, and asked for further corrections. This time the salesperson said they could just swap the names between the two accounts. So we filled in the necessary forms and were told that the updates would be made in a week's time.
In the following month, we received bizarre new phone bills as follows:

Sydney bill

Canberra bill



John phone set – silver

Veronica phone set – red

Veronica phone no. - 04yyyyyyyy

John phone no. – 04xxxxxxxx

A/C name - John

A/C name - Veronica


This time, the account names were correctly updated, but all my phone usages went to the Canberra bill and all Veronica's usages went to my Sydney bill. I had to pay for Veronica's usages and Veronica for mine, and we had to reimburse each other afterwards. We did these for a few months, and subsequently couldn't help but to complain to the mobile phone shop in Chatswood. The salesperson suggested a brilliant idea. He said in order to cut short the time to fix the problem and to save all the paperwork and updating, the simplest way was to swap my mobile phone set with Veronica's! We strongly refused saying we had our own choices of colour and style of the phone set. The salesperson then further suggested we could keep our phone sets and just swap the SIM cards!!
We went almost to the top of the roof. True. It would be simple for the shop as they didn't have to do anything. But we had to go through all the pains of notifying all our friends and contacts that our phone numbers were to change, not to mention to update all the contact information in the SIM cards ourselves. So we spent an hour in the shop patiently explaining in details where we started from and what exactly we wanted to be, and drew several diagrams and the following table outlining what we wanted to achieve:

Sydney bill

Canberra bill



John phone set – silver

Veronica phone set – red

John phone no. – 04xxxxxxxx

Veronica phone no. - 04yyyyyyyy

A/C name - John

A/C name - Veronica


So we filled in the necessary forms, and were told that the updates would be made in a week's time.
Luckily this time, all were fine in the following month. We were afraid that if we ever needed to go to the shop again to request for further changes, the salesperson might ask me to rename myself to Veronica, and Veronica to rename herself to John in order to fix our problem!!!

I just don't understand why an apparently simple matter could grow to become a such complicated and annoying issue!

Friday, August 20, 2010

Another Unresolved Chinese Couplet

In my blogs - Qianlong Emperor and the Widow, 8 December, 2009 and 2 March, 2010, I mentioned a famous Chinese couplet which remains unresolved. Here is another one:

東種蘭 西種菊 中總種竹

As I understand, this couplet still remains uncompleted. If you can complete it, please let me know.

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Chinese Arts

Pretty Woman

Monkey King

Tang Monk

Flying Eagle

Lion

Monday, August 2, 2010

Achilles and the Tortoise

The tortoise challenged the great Greek warrior, Achilles to a race with an allowance of 100-metre head start. Although Achilles was such a strong and fast warrior, he would never be able to catch the tortoise, not to mention to overtake him.
In order for Achilles to overtake the tortoise, he had to run the 100 metres, bringing him to the tortoise's starting point. Since both Achilles and the tortoise were moving at the same time, by the time Achilles reached the tortoise's starting point, the tortoise should have moved forward some distance, say a metre. So the tortoise was a metre ahead of Achilles. In order to overtake the tortoise, Achilles then had to run that one metre, bringing him to the tortoise's new position. Again, since they both were moving at the same time, by the time Achilles reached the tortoise's new position, the tortoise should have moved forward yet some distance, albeit smaller this time. So the tortoise was still at some distance ahead of Achilles. Achilles then had to catch up with the new distance. But the tortoise yet moved forward another distance at the same time, albeit much smaller and smaller. So the tortoise was always at some distance ahead of Achilles, no matter how small it was. Therefore, Achilles would never catch the tortoise.
This is the famous Zeno's Paradox by the Greek philosopher, Zeno (490BC - 430BC). We know from common sense Achilles could overtake the tortoise in matter of seconds. But Zeno's argument was perfectly logical. How can we resolve this paradox?
I shall leave it to some later blog.