For those that don’t know, iDTGV (not affiliated with TGV) is a train service in France that I keep calling iDTVG for some reason. Seriously, though, iDTGV is an interesting train service because it caters to my demographic – you know, the one that doesn’t appreciate screaming freaking kids running amok while you’re trying to enjoy some quiet time, a baguette and maybe a bottle of wine en route to Nice from Paris. They have train cars that cater to a number of needs – iDzen for the traveller who may want to chill out or sleep, iDzap which has a jovial and engaging atmosphere, a bar that feels more like a real bar / cafe and iDNiGHT which is the overnight dance party train with DJ and liquor service.

Pretty cool huh?

Sadly, on a recent trip to France, I wasn’t able to actually experience iDTGV. You see, despite booking some reasonable tickets online and being assured everything is copasetic, hours later, the system would tell me that my credit card has been refused. After what seemed like hours on the phone to my credit card company, they noted that no authorization was attempted, so I was like WTF?!

After trying to reach the company, pacing around, trying every credit card in my arsenal, losing my reservation and the likes, I took it upon myself to visit a train station that purports to have an iDTGV booth. Guess what…. it was a freaking Internet kiosk with no people in sight! After making several enquiries, I was told that in most cases, there are no iDTGV staff at train stations except to manage departures. GREAT!

BTW – while I was out on my escapade, and thanks to SFR’s 3G+ internet service, I received the following reply from iDTGV:

From: Service Clients iDTGV [mailto:reclamation@idtgv.com]
Sent: Thursday, August 06, 2009 5:51 AM
To: Rajesh Taneja
Subject: <Ref3688321> Question sur le paiement

Dear Sir Taneja,

We acknowledge receipt of your message on the payment of your order.

Please note that for security reasons you can only pay by credit card French, European or American.

We remain at your disposal for any additional information you consider useful.

Best regards
Nadège
Service Clients
Une question sur iDTGV ? Consultez la rubrique « Besoin d’aide » de notre site !
www.idtgv.com
Du lundi au vendredi
de 09H00 à 18h00
(sauf jours fériés)

<rant>So what? In France, Canadians are chopped liver? What about Vimy Ridge, Juno Beach, Operation Overlord and the Battle of Normandy? Haven’t we paid our dues? If it weren’t for the Canadians’ presence in France, I suspect that Nadège might’ve been Wilhelm and French would be an elective in secondary school.</rant>

After the whole excercise, we wound up at the SNCF booth and booked to be on a TGV train to Cannes the following day, screaming children in tow *sigh*.

Makes me want to head to burning man or something like that!

Background: SSID here in Canada operates numerous communication networks for mobile devices ranging from the ultra-secure Exchange/ActiveSync over the air with SSL and IP tunnelling, to Blackberry Enterprise, to run of the mill IMAP4 with GPRS.

Late last year, I purchased a few Blackberry 8707′s to attach to our Blackberry Enterprise network. These devices are set up for GSM, GPRS, EDGE and UMTS (for use in Japan). This setup theoretically makes it possible to use the device in Japan.

Problem #1: Our Blackberries are activated with Rogers Wireless.

I find that large Canadian companies don’t really provide support to technically saavy customers or early adopters. If you buy a Vodafone-branded BB 8707, you’re SOL if you need help from the carrier.

The details for roaming in Japan on the Rogers website are sketchy. We’ve used Blackberries in Russia, Ukraine, Thailand, India, France, Germany and even China. Japan’s networks are quite different since they don’t really support GSM out there.

Rogers reccomends that you rent a phone while in Japan (along with a new phone number, etc.). The proliferation of quad-band phones like the Nokia E61 and Blackberry 8707 makes it possible for these phones to work in Japan without renting a phone but there is the question of a roaming agreement between Rogers and the Japanese carriers (in this case, Softbank and NTT DoCoMo).

After several phone calls to Rogers where I got a myriad of responses from somewhat clueless customer service agents telling me to refer to their website to flat out refusals to answer questions because I’m using an unsupported device (DUH! If I could buy a supported device for this application, I WOULD).

Problem #2: Which carrier do I select in Japan? DoCoMo? Vodafone (who obviously supports the hardware)? SoftBank? KDDI?

Well, after encountering all the rhetoric from the people at the network, there was a thought of switching all of our users off of Rogers on to a network that works, even if we have to go offshore and spend money upfront to secure the accounts. At this point, reliability outweighs the cost.

On the same trip, the Blackberry was tested and worked flawlessly. Australia (where we picked up a spare couple of Vodafone simcards activated and ready to go in case) and Thailand.

Upon arrival to Japan, when loaded with a Rogers simcard, the device stated that the connection was refused. The Vodafone simcard worked without a hitch.

I decided to report this issue to Rogers who’s agent, after some investigation, mentioned the account didn’t have “Blackberry Dot Net” on the account. Strange but apparently this didn’t affect the device in other countries but did in Japan.

Anyhow, after that small addition to the account, it was good to go. Finally, global communications on NTT DoCoMo.

PS – Vodafone staff are very helpful with roaming in Japan. Probably has something to do with Australia being i-mode enabled (therefore having strong ties to Japan) thanks to people like Walter Adamson.

Do you have an email newsletter? If so, then usability guru Jakob Nielsen’s latest studies of users’ eye movements across web pages is compelling visual evidence of how people read on the web, and how it is different from how they read print.

Nielsen draws three key conclusions for online writing:

• Users won’t read your text thoroughly in a word-by-word manner. Exhaustive reading is rare, especially when prospective customers are conducting their initial research to compile a shortlist of vendors. Yes, some people will read more, but most won’t.

• The first two paragraphs must state the most important information. There’s some hope that users will actually read this material, though they’ll probably read more of the first paragraph than the second.

• Start subheads, paragraphs, and bullet points with information-carrying words

that users will notice when scanning down the left side of your content. They’ll read the third word on a line much less often than the first two words.

I was totally stoked – they have Internet on the plane. Satellite service broadband. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to go online – it seems that their credit card processing system wasn’t processing. I initiated a text chat with their support personnel and seconds before they were about to grant me free access to their Internet service for the flight, the battery on my laptop died…. Of course, flying economy means that there are no recepticles to charge your laptop and the power in the Kitchen was 1000W and had a frequency of 400Hz. I didn’t want to risk the frequency and what it might potentially do to my laptop so I decided to not charge it on the plane.

One item to remark, we flew in on an Airbus A340. The Internet service is known as Conexion by Boeing. Only in the airline industry would they do this. I’ve never heard of a Toyota with a Nissan radio or GPS onboard for example.

Not having Internet on the flight, I was forced to go Analog. I finally got around to doing some reading and also spent some time getting to know the person beside me. The fellow was from South Africa, going to Belgium from Vancouver (attended a conference). We learned about each other in depth and will probably hook up at some point in time – he works with satellites and has been taking a University research project to fruition in this genre.

He commented about how Africa wasn’t advanced and the mentality which was underlying – the story stuck:

A tractor salesman comes to a home on the edge of a small maize farm in Africa, the owner is sitting on the porch smoking his pipe and drinking his beer. The salesman comments to the farmer how if he doubled the size of his farm, in the next year he could supply maize to his neighbour and then if he doubled it again the year after, he could supply it to his other neighbours and then the following year, to the villagers and then he could buy a tractor to turn the fields for him. This would give him more money so he could come home and sit on his porch and drink his beer.

The story stuck about how in Africa there is abundance and so people don’t think about tomorrow because there is plenty for today. Things are changing with the wars, famine and AIDS epedemic but slowly.

Some pics from the now…

Next stop Nice for Etre 2004. Incidentally, I just got off the line with Jimmy, they need me out in Japan ASAP. I’ll be there November 1st for at least a couple weeks.

Went back to Calgary, had a great time. Saturday I spent by myself – some much needed R&R time to recharge. I went down to Crowfoot by bus (the driver was Punjabi so I chatted with him about the Centre for Indo Canadian Studies and Research (CICSR) as well – he actually recognized the project which is good but I digress…) to have some dinner. Started at Joey Tomato’s and had some potstickers but I found that the food was too unrefined so I ventured out and found a new place – Outback Steak House. The center cut sirloin was okay. They had an interesting bread that I’ll keep my eyes open for in the future. After that, I felt a bit bloated from eating the cheap beef (probably not free range, organic or grain fed, right?) so I walked the 2km back up Nose Hill home. The sky was beautiful – a blue that I haven’t seen in a very long time. The big sky is something that I sometimes miss – makes you feel so miniscule.

Sunday, it was off to have brunch at the River Cafe where the food was delectable. I had the 7 grain pancake (they didn’t have my first choice, the waffles since the waffle iron was broken), Mom had an egg white omlette with quinoa amongst other things. We then had a stroll through Eau Claire. Calgary is really nice this time of year. I wish I had my rollerblades. Next time for sure. That night I went to a concert at the Telus Convention Centre which was put on by Rupie Sachdeva. Rupie’s sister, MP Sindi Hawkins, whom I also got to chat with about the CICSR got up on the stage and spoke briefly about her battle with Leukemia. After asking the crowd to give marrow, she also made a mention for those in the crowd to speak to me about the CICSR since this was a cause she strongly supported. At the end of the concert, we drove her father and mother home. Mr. Alhuwalia, Rupie and Sindi’s father, told me about his life in Canada and how he was given the Governer General’s Award in 1993 and also how he’s been nominated for the Order of Canada by 15 people including Paul Martin. I hope he invites me to his award ceremony .

What a weekend! Got into Calgary on the Friday and spent the weekend making the rounds in Calgary, meeting people to get the Centre off the ground. Really enjoyed the time I spent with Skip Bassford, Parm Bains, Tok Herar, Paul Wadhawan and especially Madeleine Hardin.

On Friday night we had a really successful roundable at the hotel where 20 guests showed up to hear about the Centre. The discussion really centred in on the actual state of the Indian Community in Calgary as well as the needs of those of Indian descent living in Calgary. What we really learned was that not all the items we would normally go to a family in BC would be applicable to those in Alberta. This is primarily because families in BC could be third and fourth generation Canadians where as those in Alberta for the most part are first generation. This made for really interesting conversation where for example, history preservation was lower on the list than social integration and access to services and repository information for the community.

Saturday, my family hosted a small getogether at my family’s place. We got a ton of support and a very passionate amount of dialog from those including Geet Shergill and Rupie Sachdeva. Pics to be linked shortly. Mom made a nice lunch for us all but I wasn’t able to endulge as I had booked a meeting with MP Deepak Obrhai as well in the afternoon. Poor Tok and Skip had to come along so they, too, were deprived of mom’s good cooking.

Saturday night, we went out to spend time at Raj Mahajan’s place. Really nice guy – funny how things are, Raj’s wife is a good friend of Mom’s. Paul and Raj have known each other for years and went to school together in India.

Sunday we made the rounds to the Punjabi and Hindu churches which generated some interest then we were off on a plane. Overall a very successful mission to Calgary.

Pre-September 11th (2001)… actually, I think it was September 8th.. 3AM, we`re crossing the border to go have some food (grease) at Denny`s. Now for background, Blaine Washington is the border town. The Denny`s is 500 yards away from the border, the yellow sign is visible from the border and it lights up the night

Go through a truck crossing as the regular crossing isclosed so here we are, I`m in my audi staring up 8 feet to where the border guard is sitting with his feet up, sticking out of the booth.. he sees me, kicks up and looks down..

“Where you all headin` at this hour, son?”

I respond, “Denny`s sir.. to have breakfast”

“Well you have a good breakfast at Lenny`s” (and I say with emphasis,Lenny`s)

…. now this was interesting from the point of view that these people are trusted to protect our borders and are usually armed with a discerning eye for detail.. Obviously this fellow had knocked back a couple too many bourbon prior to his shift or perhaps he wasn`t aware of the bigyellow sign with the word Denny`s behind him. I guess speeling (sic) is not a prerequisite for working at the border.

On a different note, policies seem to vary from crossing to crossing. I`ve been turned away at Point Roberts since I didn`t have 10 pieces of I.D. with me…(a little background: Pt. Roberts is a little tip of land which belongs to USA and is surrounded by Canada.. it is a small piece .. so small that the children who live there usually travel from Pt. Roberts, through Canada to Blaine to go to school)… even though once at Pt. Roberts, there really wasn`t much to do.. but I did have dinner reservations there at Brewsters which was the original scope of the evening.. :/ yeesh!

Note to self.. border crossing guards work at Pt. Roberts as there is no other valid assignment for them, it`s akin to being assigned to Alaska (or BFE as it may be calledin certain states for sure.. btw prize goes out to the person who can tell me what BFE stands for). I suppose I understand their bitterness now.

Thirdly, went shopping this weekend … decided that going south was the plan… hit the border when the guard asks me.. “where you goin`?” … I reply, “down to peace arch for some shopping and then maybe further in..” to which he responds, “people do that? really?i thought that placewas a ghost town…” .. the guard was more interested in shopping venues than in finding out our citizenships.. aww well, i guess the edumacation (sic) system today may be to blame?