I will talk about my missing suitcase later…came home and switched on the gas cylinder to hear a horrible hiss and a dangerous stench (a stenching agent is added to the odourless cooking gas for just this purpose) and called my gas agency. I waited the entire morning and finally someone ambles in at 3 pm. (Well at least it prevented me from sleeping due to jet lag). He then pokes into the cylinder with a screwdriver and then announces, first, that “the washer has gone”, and then that “the regulator has gone”, and that I must change the regulator.

But I must have XYZ papers (luckily, I do…that paper dates from 1976, I kid you not, when the connection was first issued to us)…and ONLY the person whose name is on the connection (KM, in this case)can come, can you beat that? And he must go to the agency before 5 pm, no matter that he is at work, about 50 km away…or there will be no cooking tonight…

Then we must bring home the regulator and try and stuff it safely into the rubber hose…another danger-ridden procedure. Why cannot the guy bring another regulator, fix it, charge me for it, and go?

I deTEST the consumer-unfriendly tactics that our services still get away with. The attitude is always “you MUST do this” and always, totally irrelevant paperwork is cited as an essential.