Don't Get Into Stuff You Don't Understand

I thankfully got this lesson for very cheap.

So, the other day - it was a weekend - this guy comes up to my house. He's from Vodafone and he has this 'offer' for me to reduce my mobile bill. This is at a time when an India-Australia match was on, but that's irrelevant here. So, he explains to me with proper numbers how I can save money on my existing plan by converting it to some other plan and paying a small upfront fee of Rs. 300/-. So, since it was numbers, I understood it quite well, and thought it made sense. Everything was fine till then. Then it started to get vague. First, there came some talk about me giving him a non-Vodafone user's number so he could contact him as a potential convert. Then, there was some talk about another sim card (a new number, in addition to my existing number) that was to be issued, and so on and so forth. But anyway, since I had understood the numbers so well, I thought it was still a good plan and promptly paid him the 300 bucks.

Anyway, so I get a call from Vodafone a few days later, to confirm if I had gone for this plan, and then the real plan starts to show up. So it seems I would have to keep the new sim active for atleast 6 months or else my plan would be deactivated and the Rs. 300 forfeited. This meant an additional outlay of Rs. 480 (Rs. 80 / month) or a willing taker of that sim card. Also, I was supposed to get a call from this guy for confirmation of the conversion of my existing plan into the new plan, which never came. I decided not to call him back and save myself additional hassle.

Net net, I'm down Rs. 300 and up a few lessons:

1. If you understand PART of the picture, it doesn't mean you understand the WHOLE picture.
2. It's ok to wait and think and then do. Don't rush.
3. Understand what's in it for the other person - I totally ignored the fact that he was actually selling me nothing but an additional Vodafone connection, which I didn't need!

Hello from my world!

So, my status is unemployed, as of Friday, 14th November, 2008. Well, not exactly, but lets leave the complications out. Anyway, so I decided to spend:
- part of my time searching for a job (read: sprucing up my resume and speaking to HR consultants, no sucking up to people, not yet at least ;) )
- part doing stuff I've "always wanted to do but never had the time to" (read: spanish, music, work out and lose the tyre)
- part thinking about what I really want to do (huh?)
- and part of my time blogging (too bad for you all!)

So with that introduction, we're ready to go!