Okay, sure. When I heard that we were going to offshore our tech support, I was a little concerned, but I wasn't surprised. I mean, every company is doing it, right?

But when I heard we were outsourcing it to a group of Shaolin monks, my eyebrows went up. I mean, I don't have anything against Shaolin monks in general…but I thought they were, you know, good if you needed to break a board over somebody's head without hurting them, or, you know, kicking ass after their monastery had been burned down. Nothing against them personally. The ones on Oprah seemed nice enough.

But then came the day that the packages arrived. In each one was a phone cradle that you plugged into a USB port. That's right, you remember like in that movie Wargames? Just about like those.

Okay fine. Whatever. Plug it up, forget about it. Then I get the dreaded blue screen of death. Bang. Fine. Reboot and bang. Blue screen again. So…I started to panic. And okay, maybe I sorta kinda didn't have all my shit backed up. You know how it is.

So I called. The guy on the other end of the line took down my information and the symptoms and said, "Let me transfer you to Level 2 support. Please hold."

Huh. This wasn't anything out of the ordinary. In fact…huh, Muzak. Muzak showtunes, in fact. I think it was "Good Morning Starshine." Jesus.

Then, the Muzak cut out and there was silence. I went to say hello but before I could, this low, throaty moan came through the phone, "MMMMMMMMOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMMOOOOOOOOO…" And so forth. Just on and on and on.

So I'm staring at the phone wondering what the hell, you know? And then Level 1 guy gets back on the line. "Sorry, sir, could we get you to place the phone in the cradle please?"

I said, okay, sure. How long is this going to take.

"They're telling me it could be a while."

I said fine, I'd go get a sandwich.

So I'm gone for an hour and a half, right? Got a sandwich, went to the mall for a bit, then came back. Soon as I walk into my office I can hear that crazy-ass moaning coming through the phone. I'm thinking, yeah, just like tech support to take forever and blow your afternoon away, right? So, you know: to hell with it. I go get a Coke, come back and read the paper. I'm on the clock but it's not my fault I can't work, right?

Five minutes later, the moaning stopped abruptly and this loud "KIIIIIIIII!" shriek came across the line. I just about spit Coke all over the funnies. When the shriek finished, bang, my computer reset itself and booted fine. In fact, somehow, miraculously, the file I had been typing on had autpsaved itself right before the machine went ballistic.

"Hello, sir?" I heard on the phone.

I picked up the handset.

"How is it, sir?"

I told him it was back to normal and by the way, what the hell did they just do?

"Hard to explain to an end user, sir. By the way, I apologize for not telling you at the start to put the handset into the cradle."

That's fine, I said.

"We're trying to work out a Chi-over-IP protocol to eliminate the need for the cradles, but we're still trying to work through the problem of spiritual packet loss."

I see, I said. Then he wished me a nice day and I did him the same.

So I'm serious: if you need to outsource your IT support, you could do a lot worse than the Shaolin monks. And if you tell them our company sent you, we get fifty registry and kernel blessings, plus BIOS mantras free of charge.

Here's my card.