Sticky in Chennai

I needed a mobile phone. To buy one Ian said it takes 15 minutes! I did this last year for many volunteers! It's easy!
He was wrong. One has to buy just the phone at one store. Then one has to buy a SIM card at another. But before one buys the SIM card, one has to go to a phone service place to have the phone activated (For new phones). This place requires a passport, passport photo, copy of passport, and a photo id with address. To photocopy was one store on another floor in another section of the mall, the photo place was on another floor in another area of the mall and that took 20 minutes itself. Just finding a photo shop was a journey, no one knew where it was but we were told it existed. I almost lost it and Ian felt a temper tantrum coming so he took over. Thank goodness or I would not have a mobile phone today but rather would have to go through it all again. Just understanding how phones work here was hard enough, thankfully Ian understood that too and I reasonably switched off my brain.
Sigh.
ha!