Astro Man

Today the Astro Man is coming to install my satellite television, and he’s due about lunchtime. I have become used to the Malaysian clock, and “about lunchtime” is probably the most accurate I can get. Anyway, he turned up on time (12.20) and after a futile one-way conversation with the security guard on the non-functioning intercom, I go down and meet him – and he appears to be having an argument with the security guard and one of the management reps, occasionally pointing to an ominous looking huge cardboard box, which looks suspiciously like it has a huge satellite dish in it.

I guess they were telling him that he couldn’t install the dish, and I was about to join in too, as I don’t want it hanging out the window either, making the place look like a council house in Croydon. Anyway, the conversation and mood suddenly appears to lighten and they allow him passed security and I let him up to the apartment. He is a miserable man, not uttering anything to me at all and when I asked what he was going to do with the dish he just grunts and shrugs his shoulders.

I leave him to it all and he makes all the necessary connections, without the need for the dish in the box, and I get television, all be it mostly in Mandarin Chinese.

After holding out his hands and asking for his installation fee (199RM) he buggers off, leaving all the boxes over the floor and this great big satellite dish in a cardboard box in the lounge, unused, and doesn’t even give me the change from the 200RM that I gave him. 

Bastard.