It was an unbelievable day!

Today was a really an amazing day! I never imagined I could accomplish all this in one day!

First, I paid the water bill. This was a cinch as I had to just walk across. I reached the collection booth in about a minute. An attendant came forward immediately and helped me feed the money into a machine and I was done in less than a minute. He even advised me to pay by cheque next time as I could pay the exact amount and could just drop the cheque!

Then I had this electricity bill to take care. I hailed an auto asked him to take me to the nearest office where I could pay my electricity bill. He said he had a rough idea where it was and said he would take me there.

We believe that the time (galige) you start from home is very important. Obviously I chose the right time today.

The driver found the place after asking a few people for directions on the way, he even got out of the auto to inquire! A real polite and helpful guy. He even gave me the change back and was happy with the small tip I gave him. There were only four people at the booth and I was done in about 3 minutes. Many opt for ECS scheme now, a direct deduction from your bank account, hence there is no real rush at the booths. I collected a form, a mandate, which will enable me to pay my next bill through ECS.

Then I had requested a friend of ours to call a plumber to come to my vacant apartment in Malleswaram. The painters who were working there had informed me that there was a leak in one of the taps. The plumber promised to be there at around 11 am and he was there right on time, in fact 5 minutes earlier. He fixed the leaky tap in about 15 minutes and was very reasonable with his charges for the work. An unbelievable day!

Next, I had an appointment with my Income Tax consultant and before meeting him I needed to collect form 16a from one of the banks with details of Tax deducted at source. I reached the bank by 12.45 and was done in again 5 minutes. A form was printed and signed and delivered to me with a smile.

I probably should wear the same clothes next time. May be it was my T shirt!

I reached the consultants office almost on time and we soon filled up the returns and up loaded them on-line. (The server did not hang!) It took a little longer with all the details that needed to be filled up. This also included a phone call to Tara for some details. Thank god for the cell phone and more thanks to him that she had carried the phone and responded. She rushed home and gave me the details over phone and we filed the Tax returns as planned.

Then I remembered that I had to buy rail tickets for my trip up north in September and again I walked to a shop just opposite to our house and was done again in 10 minutes. I could do it from home once I get my credit cards organised. It could have been even faster, but the girl at the desk took time off to attend to one more customer who seemed to be in a real hurry and she accommodated him and I chose to ignore the interruption! (A miracle as I do object if people butt in and they do it all the time!)

Then Tara said let us go to the Saibaba temple and I said yes. As we were waiting in a queue of 6 people at the temple, a group of girls formed a secondary queue and butted into our queue. Saibaba tells us to be patient and I was patient with the impatient girls who could not wait. May be they were getting late and had to be home on time!