Did they rule my country?

"Just look at this inefficiency.... terrible.....! Whereas, in foreign countries......"
Are such comments still made?

2005. We shift to this town in UK, stay at a serviced apartment for a few weeks, find a suitable apartment to rent. So far so good. With three days left to move, the fun begins. The estate agent says he has mailed the rental agreement, but we don't recieve it. We go to the agency. A cursory "Sorry about that!" , and we get a new form. We find that our 'previous landlord' in UK has to give a letter saying we have always paid our rents on time. We call up the manager of the serviced apartment. "Sure!" she says and forgets all about it for the next 24 hours. When the letter doesn't arrive, we call her again. "I was busy. I will try to send it today". TRY......!?? She knows that we HAVE to leave the serviced apartment the next day and if we havn't got our apartment by then, we have nowhere to go! But the letter arrives the next morning. We move.

There is gas, electricity, and water in the new apartment, but we have to apply for the telephone. We do. We get a letter on the 1st, telling us our telephone number, and saying the line will be activated on the 21st. 21 DAYS?? This is a 'first world country'! Surely there must be some mistake? We call the service provider from the mobile. But the letter is right, no engineer is free before that date. On the 21st, the engineer will make the connections outside our building and the phone will start working. Sigh! We settle down to wait.

The much awaited day arrives, and I lift the phone every few minutes to see if there is a dial tone, but no, silence. Towards afternoon it occurs to me to dial the number given to us, from my mobile. I hear the phone ringing and....... a lady picks up the phone!! Ooops, I have dialled a wrong number! Since someone HAS picked up the phone, I tentatively ask if the number is such and such and the lady says no. Ah..., so I HAVE dialled a wrong number. I dial again, careful not to make a mistake. The same lady on the other end, a little exasperated. "No...! It is NOT that number!" .......Just where is my call going? Now we call customer service. After being on line for 45 minutes (no exaggeration!) we are told that the engineer has finished with our area for this week, and will visit us after 5 days. Wha...?? Can't believe this. Meanwhile a friend visits me from Bangalore and through him I come to know that Mysore is now completely Wi-fi!! I can sit in a park in Mysore and access the internet.

Five days pass and finally a mechanic arrives, checks all the connections within the house, tells me that everything in the house is ok. There must be some fault with the lines outside. I am assured that an engineer will arrive shortly to correct it. I wonder what 'shortly' means. A couple of hours later, I am relieved to see the engineer working furiously outside the apartment, in the midst of a tangle of cables. I learn that our cable had been connected to the apartment downstairs. They had TWO cables leading to the same phone! Cool! I just hope that the exasperated lady downstairs hasn't made long distance calls through my line.

I have just started reading a book called 'Empire. How Britain made the modern world', by Nial Ferguson. According to the blurb, the book discusses this: "....Just how did a small, rainy island in the north atlantic..... rule the plains of Asia, the jungles of Africa and the deserts of Arabia". I would really like to know.