We’re expecting our new television to be delivered this morning, sometime between 9 am and noon. We still need to get a tv stand for it and an antenna. The antenna, though, will depend on how clearly we get anything with the silly little rabbit ears that come with the television. It helps, though, that we are blocks away from two television stations.
In anticipation of the television, Fahim laughs and tells me that I’m really going to have to learn Sinhalese in a hurry. Why, dear? Because the Hindi movies are shown with Sinhalese subtitles and the Tamil movies are also shown with Sinhalese subtitles. No English subtitles here.
Oh no.
The television still hasn’t been delivered by the time Fahim came home for lunch. I told him that, thinking it was typical Sri Lankan casualness, when he tells me, "Oh, dearest, no, I muddled things up a bit."
Turns out he did take my advice and check on this other television model online and see if it had all the features he needed. Turns out it did.
See, television we paid for last night is 21" multisystem. Television he switched to today is 21" multisystem flat screen for an extra 500 Rupees. So now, the television that we’ll really be getting has to be delivered to this store from another showroom and then delivered to our house. They say probably sometime around 6. Yeah, okay.
Um, Fahim, dearest, is there a reason you didn’t let me know earlier? "Would it have affected you?" Yes. I cooked lunch earlier, anticipating being interrupted for a half hour by delivery guys. "So the food isn’t so hot. Isn’t that a good thing in this heat?" Fahim. Dearest.
It’s really beside the point, even if he does have a point. Are you reading this, Fahim, my dearest love?
Uh, whatever.
The TV arrives at around 7:30pm – Fahim was about to go pray, and at some point, I need to correct my severely mistaken prayer times. Like I previously thought, I messed them up, and good. But that’s another topic.
The manager arrives with the tv, same as with our other deliveries. Fahim figures that the manager is the only one who has a vehicle, so they have to use his van for deliveries, hence the late night bit.
Fahim unpacks the tv and it isn’t flat screen like he thought. Oh well. But it is a Hitachi multisystem, so it will still do everything he wants it to do, so what else really matters? Fahim tries attaching the antenna, and guess what?
Welcome to Sri Lanka – the antenna is a couple of inches too short.
I tell Fahim that we ought to take it back to the store and get a proper one. He tells me no, they won’t do anything about it, it’s not going to accomplish anything. The store buys the tvs before they sell them – not on credit or anything – and if there are any problems, they can’t send things back to the manufacturer because it’s too expensive, so they would have to absorb the cost, and they aren’t willing to do that. That’s just the way it is here.
Drat.
So I guess we are stuck getting a honking big antenna.
