Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Starting the new year...

On a sunny, breezy Tuesday evening, a young lady received a call from her friend who had just got off work. They were ecstatic to finally spend some time together after nearly half a year of not meeting up. Her friend came up to her apartment for a short chat and to have some water. They then decided to head out for their dinner.

While waiting for the lift, the young lady noticed that the door to her apartment won't close and decided to check. Unknown to her, the lock was locked on the inside. When the door slammed shut, she tried to turn the knob and found that, she could not open the door. She tried all the keys that she had. None of them worked.

She made an emergency overseas call on her mobile to her friend, who is the actual tenant of the unit. She managed to get her agent's contact and tried to work things out directly with the agent. As the agent could only arrive 2 hours later, the young lady and her friend went for their dinner at an Indonesian restaurant and after that, an evening walk.

When the agent arrived with another key, the young lady thought that the sky had cleared. However, to everyone's dismay, that key did not turn the knob, either. Heartbroken, the young lady made her way down to the lobby where numbers to locksmiths were made available on the notice board.

First number... could not connect. Second number... could not connect either. Okay, so she tried the third number, which was a 1300 number. Nope, no connection. Thinking that her mobile had no reception, she checked her phone to find that she had full signal. Could it be out of credit? No, normally there would be a verbal message informing you of your low credit. Okay, call the phone company to check the account balance... could not connect... what?

The young lady had no choice but to use her friend's mobile. They managed to get a locksmith who could make it in 30 minutes. Okay, no worries. So they sat at the stairs facing the entrance, to wait.

While waiting, the young lady checked her mobile again. Why couldn't it make outgoing calls? What about incoming? Her friend tried by calling. Yup, phone rang so should be no problems with the network. Let's turn the phone off and back on again. Right, nothing. Before this it decided to not show anything on the memory card and now this!??!?! Try again, off and on again. Same thing. Maybe it's the SIM card, not the phone? They swapped SIM cards and found out that it was the SIM card that was faulty.

When she put her own SIM card back into her own phone again, she thought she should try texting to see if it worked. She sent one message to a friend and miraculously, he replied! Wow! Okay, let's try calling again... finally, it made the call!

It was such a relief when the locksmith arrived! His advice was:

1) Get a key for the lock.
2) Change the lock to a new and better one.

He made the young lady fill up a form to prove that he wasn't liaising with her to break into the unit. He was also nice enough to write her a tax invoice to see if she would be able to get the agent to reimburse her as it really wasn't her fault for not having the key to that lock.

So now, that young lady is AUD150 poorer and believes even more that this new year of the tiger is not going to be a good one for her.

And that young lady was me.

2 comments:

Voon said...

you should've bought one of those cutters. Even cheaper than getting a locksmith.

Radar^^AL said...

When was this??