2008
Mar 
30

Coming Soon

11:30  
 

New news on an old front

So I may have mentioned previously that I still have no internet in my apartment in Cairo. Some of you may remember that it took me three months to get internet in Alexandria. That was terrible, and I thought that nothing else could be more terrible than that.

Oh was I wrong.

I have now been living in Cairo since the beginning of January. A few days after arriving, as I was settling in, I went to seek a DSL connection in the apartment, having finally gotten all of the documentation that I needed from the landlady. Everything was so smooth, and they said it would be about two weeks.

Fast forward three months. It is now almost April, and we are still waiting. I come to the BCA in the afternoon/evening to check my e-mail and call home on Skype. It is a great place, but I can’t sit around here in my pajamas all day and work online, can I? It’s just not as comfortable as being at home and getting work done.

The list of problems which as brought us to the present is as follows:

  1. There was already a DSL with a different company from the previous tenant
  2. To have a new DSL installed I needed a cancellation code from the previous company
  3. There was a huge overdue balance on the account at the previous company, which they wanted to hold me responsible for
  4. The landlady refused to deal with the problem in any timely manner, because she didn’t want to pay the bill, and couldn’t be bothered to go to the company until I became apoplectic over it
  5. I accidentally insulted the landlady by telling her that I felt like I had been lied to
  6. She stopped speaking to me
  7. When we finally got the cancellation code, with a great deal of help from our simsar, Samah, the new company lost the information
  8. When we tried to give them the code again, they wanted dates and things—which was not part of the original request
  9. The company then told us that it would take approximately 3 weeks after that

And here we are today, three-ish weeks after the last broken promise. Stacey called a week an a half ago and was informed—by an employee, live on the other end of the phone—that they were not working that day because it was the Prophet’s birthday, and that we should call back after the weekend. We spent hours trying to figure out the logic of having someone present at an office to “not work” and answer the phones to inform customers of their inactivity.

Stace called back after the weekend, and was informed that now there was a problem with the main monopoly phone company’s equipment at our switching station, and that we would have to wait another 9 days.

We were both speechless. Stunned silent.

These new nine days come ripe in a few days, and we have heard nothing. There is, however, the possibility that someone has been trying to deliver equipment—a sure sign of readiness of connectivity—because I have heard the doorbell ring a couple of times in the past two days and was unable to get to it fast enough: the first time I was sleeping and the second time I was in the shower, and either way, I felt that it would be inappropriate to run to answer the door naked. This would have made for an uncomfortable Egypt moment.

Regardless, there is a reason for my telling this story. I intend, once the situation has been resolved, to do a major upgrade on the site and the blog, as well as reinstate the gallery and podcast. I have been working on a few podcast episodes, and I have a metric ton of photos to share. I just need to wait a few more days, hopefully.

Inshallah.