Chaos Rises Tidal

It is Zhong Qiu Jie.  It’s only September 15^th so it hardly feels like the middle of autumn, but Chinese time is different.  I wish a Happy Mid Autumn Festival to everyone I share more than the briefest exchange with today.  The call center girl at Ctrip?  “Happy Mid Autumn Festival.”  Cab driver?  You betcha.  And the kid at the Apple store?  A truck load of moon cakes for that kid.

I have resisted the impulse to throw my iPhone 6 against a wall.  As narrated, it had been suddenly manifesting a host of vexing, seemingly unrelated issues.  Now, that the problems are all solved, I can stare back incredulous considering the me that was yelling audibly at an inanimate object. What important little devices these phones have become.  Plans fall apart, reputations disassemble and chaos rises tidal, when they don’t perform.

I managed to book myself a same-day appointment with the Apple Genius Bar and arrived uncharacteristically, on time.  No traffic on the holiday, on the street or in the store. I was instructed to wait and I took a spot at one of the tables, by the wall.  After a short while a young bespectacled fellow popped up and introduced himself.  I had imagined this moment a few times already and I pulled back the sluice and channeled out all the problems of the last few weeks.  I described three different issues in assertive Chinese detail and, closed by insisting the phone was broadly malfunctioning, inquiring "am I still under warranty?"

He took the issues on, one by one:  “See you need to uninstall this VPN app that is hanging your connection.  The mic that projects voice is rather dirty, let me clean it.  Your contacts are all accessible through this alternative pathway.  See?  Yes.  You are still under warranty.”  He’d dismissed the issues so effortlessly and convincingly that I no longer cared about the details of my warranty.  This will be fine.  The modern day mechanic, rebranded as a ‘genius.’  “Thank you.  A happy Zhong Qiu Jie to you.”