Canadia Beats

Not too far from where I live, and real close to my nearest bus stop, is am Indian restaurant (Indian cuisine and pizzeria!). They’re not the best Indian restaurant in town, in fact they’re not even very good, but they are perfectly placed for grabbing a quick curry after work on a Wednesday night. That and the fact that it’s only $11 for a curry (excl. seafood), rice, naan bread and papadom at dinner time.

We all know to expect a bit of a wait when ordering takeaway food, and with a supermarket nearby this is often a great time to grab some TP and toothpaste, or a bottle of wine if I’m feeling saucy.

But sometimes it’s nice to phone ahead and have it waiting for you. I thought of that tonight after I’d already started walking. Did you know there are no phone books in any of the phone booths up Queen Street, along K Road, and Great North Road? I know that now. I put out a call to Twitter for anyone to text me the number so I could phone ahead, but that didn’t work. Hell, even if people tried this place isn’t easy to Google unless you already know its name, and I didn’t. It doesn’t really exist if it ain’t online.

So let me tell you all about the Copper Chimney, 572 Great North Road, Grey Lynn, Auckland. Telephone (0 9) 376 1600. Lunch 11am-2:30pm (lunch combo $8. Same as dinner plus a can of coke). Dinner 5pm-10:30pm. Open seven days. Halal.

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If only that had been available to me earlier tonight. Don’t worry, I got my curry.

Sometimes it’s a real struggle finding anything out here in New Zealand, especially with regards to telecommunications services. Yeah, you could try ringing your service provider (they can understand what you’re saying), but even if you hit 0 and get stright through to an off-shore human there’s no guarantee they’ll know either. I’ve answered phones, and if other people are anything like me then they’re mostly making it up. Don’t know becomes no. End call.

What’s my point? Some of us were discussing whether Telecom had anything similar to the Vodafone Best Mates plan – the flat monthly fee thing that lets you call a nominated mobile from your mobile as much as you like. It’s a pretty good setup, and we figured Telecom should definitely have it. So I jumped on the google and tried to find out. The closest I could find was some discussion last September on Geekzone about the possibility of this plan (actually, the answer to my question is in this thread, but we’re googling people. I don’t want to dig, I want the answer to be obvious from the search results).

Next I hit the Telecom website, figuring they’ll have the info I need there. Now that I know where the answer is it’s kind of right there on their mobile front page, but I dug through their Plans and Calling for about quarter of an hour without turning anything up.

How was this problem solved? Someone spotted a poster for Telecom’s My Favourites in a Telecom store. Mystery solved. It’s basically exactly what I was looking for. Convenience of solving this mystery? None. I think what really upsets me is how Google let me down. Come on Kiwis!, post every detail of your life online so I can find it! Feed the tubes, people. I don’t want to talk to people or go to shops. Help me out.

That is all.