I opened my email on Sunday morning. I was greeted by the usual prompt for my “username.” I keyed that in. Then I got the prompt for the “password.” I entered that. But then something odd happened. The Hotmail account I’ve used for at least six or seven years, disallowed my entry.
“You’re account has been blocked,” was all it said.
Since I’m an old-technology person, I searched for a telephone number for IT support, dialled it, and, of course, ended up offshore. I was connected to a young man in Delhi, India. Thus began an hour-long conversation as we slowly deduced that I’d been blocked from my email account because messages I’d sent over the weekend (all identified with the same “subject line”) were suddenly considered spam. The anti-spam system kicked in and I was stopped from entering my own email system. Efficient? Maybe. Productive? Not at all.
Unless you consider that the time I spent on the phone to India in conversation with that young technician proved quite productive. You know how it goes. As we began to explore my problem, he kept repeating – almost like a mantra – “One second… One second…” Eventually, to break the monotony, I thought I’d find out a bit more about my IT doctor. First I asked him what time of day it was in India. He told me it was evening and that he was nearing the end of his shift.
“How long is that?” I asked. “Do you get any breaks?”
“It’s nine hours long, with three breaks – 15 minutes, 15 minutes and a half-hour for lunch – for a total of one hour off.”
Sounded reasonably civilized. Then I wondered what his wage might be, but since the minimum wage in that country for many is less than $2,000 a year, I didn’t have the heart to ask him. I did ask him his name and how old he was. Aseem Sharma, he said, and he’s 30. I asked if he was married or had a family. No. But he loved to read and that gave our conversation a lift especially when I learned I was a writer. He mentioned a bunch of philosophers and political economists I didn’t know. Although he did say he liked Thomas Friedman and “The World is Flat.”
What occurred to me in that moment – notwithstanding Friedman’s master’s in philosophy, his New York Times credibility and his three Pulitzer Prizes – was that our world isn’t so much flat. It’s amazingly small, when I can have an hour-long chat on a 1-800 line with an IT guy in India and neither of us is particularly worried about the time consumed by the small talk or the cost of long distance.
Many years ago, when my family spent summers on a farm in rural Ontario, we had a party line telephone. One day I picked up the line to make a call, when an unexpected voice came on.
“London calling,” she said.
“As in London, Ontario?” I asked.
“London, England,” she said. And before we knew it we’d begun a conversation about the weather in London at the time, the latest on the Royal Family and the price of a pound sterling in U.S. funds. Then I realized that somebody would be charged long distance for all this idle chatter and I quickly wrapped up the conversation and got off the line. I never did see a billing for that call to London, England.
Then, there was the time in 1976 when I found a newspaper story about an actor named Carmen Nigro, who had played King Kong in the original 1933 classic movie; he was famous for his costumes and talent mimicking apes which got him the job of portraying Kong’s terrorizing New York. Well, I just had to find him for my radio show. So, I called directory assistance in Chicago (where Nigro was apparently working as a security guard for an insurance company in his senior years).
“I wonder if you could help me find King Kong,” I said to the startled directory assistance operator that day. And when I explained that it was for a radio interview, she said, “Sure…” Thus began a half-hour long search on Bell Telephone’s tab through several Chicago-based insurance companies to track down Nigro. We eventually found the former ape actor and, boy, was that directory assistance operator impressed. When I aired the interview with Nigro, I gave the operator a special credit. The only charge my radio station had to pay was the interview time with Mr. Nigro.
By the way, my IT acquaintance in Delhi, India, Aseem Sharma managed to unlock the access to my Hotmail. And he didn’t even charge me – just like the old days. So I promised I’d send him a book – not one of Friedman’s – one of mine.