You Can't Make Mistakes.

No headline will suffice today

So, for those of you who I didn’t call up in the middle of the night ecstatically or bomb your e-mail inbox with the news: I have an internet connection in my apartment.

It was the strangest thing. Yesterday, people were knocking on the door all day. I was getting a little fed up with it after a while, but then some courier showed up with a box. Inside the box was a magical internet connection device that I thought I would never see.

I swiftly phoned the internet company, which had told me several weeks before that we would be delayed by another month. This sent me into a tailspin of anxiety and I had to undergo some therapy for it.

The man on the other end of the phone said, “Yes, Mr. John, I have some good news for you! Everything is working and you need to call tech support and they will set you up.” I was chomping at the bit at this point. I tore into the box that contained the router as though it were filled with some sort of addictive substance that I had a long history with. I called the tech support and waited while he walked me through a process that I can do in my sleep, but the net result was that at the end of the phone call I was actually reading my e-mail.

My e-mail! In my apartment! I was so grateful. It took me hours to remember that this was not amazing in any way. This should have been as simple as a phone call waiting a week or two at the outside. My head was not spinning from the efficiency and deftness of the customer service and support of TEData. In addition, I am moving to a different city in a month and a half and will have to go through the same nightmare again somewhere else. I refuse to think about all of this right now, as I would rather bask in the radioactive glow of my hard drive as it melts from overuse.

I was so overjoyed that I was able to finally download gigantic files at my leisure, listen to NPR online, aggregate podcasts, update and reinstall my operating system, and yes, finally update my blog software.

The OS upgrade was frigging sweet. I had done the patch upgrade before at a friend’s house with internet, but it isn’t the same as sitting down, making your peace with God, and reformatting your laptop. Again.

So I did that last night. It was nice. It also gave me the chance to completely rid my system of Windows, which I hadn’t used in 6 months but still had on another drive partition wasting precious hard-disk space. I have a fully open-source laptop now.

Today, then, I will spend upgrading my blog software. This could go one of two ways: 1. Without a hitch. 2. I will spend ten hours attempting to get things back to the way that they were before, so that they just work.

This second possible eventuality is unlikely, but also somehow inevitable. I can’t explain this properly, but thankfully, someone else already has done the job. Please refer to the following XKCD comic for a complete explanation: http://xkcd.com/349/.

Regardless, I would be thrilled to spend an entire day staring at code attempting to sort out just what went wrong before totally losing my mind and being reduced to a wrecked, sobbing heap on the carpet. It is something that I haven’t been able to do in months and months, and even the opportunity makes me smile inside.

Ahh, it’s good to be back on the internet.

I think that maybe once a week or so, I will refer you all to something that I read and love online so that you can read and love it as well.

This week, I shall refer you to the blog of Dr. Mona El-Farra called From Gaza, With Love. Mona lives in Gaza and writes about her life there. It is one of the most brilliant, illuminating, and heart-wrenching things online today.

I hope that you will enjoy it.

http://fromgaza.blogspot.com/

I have given up on ever using the internet in my home again.

Well, I know that this has been a recurring theme, but I still don’t have an internet connection in my apartment. After two months of waiting with one company I had to cancel the contract, as you may remember. Now, I have waited for another month with the second company because there was a hold-up involving a cancellation code from the first company not working.

Finally, I had the cancellation codes, everything was in order, I physically went to their offices to check on the status. They told me that they would be calling me early last week.

No call.

I called this Wednesday and was told that, “Oh yes. There is problem in the exchange in Sidi Geber.” This was the same thing that the first internet company told me two months ago. I went from zero to wild-eyed-lunatic in 4 seconds and began berating the human on the other end of the phone. He, of course, told me that the problem was not something that they could have forseen. I told him that I had had the same problem months before and he replied that he didn’t know anything about that because that is a different company, blah, blah.

I hung up totally demoralized. I have never been so frustrated in all my life. Then—perfect timing—my roommate got home and wanted to talk about the internet problem. I explained it to him, and also told him that we couldn’t talk about it anymore or I would have a stroke. This did nothing to deter him. We had to talk about it. He suggested that we move. I couldn’t deal with it and had to meet some folks for coffee, so I readied myself for the outside world and left.

I was going to a coffee joint right around the corner from my apartment. I began the short walk across the district and as I was walking past one of the many little gardens in Mustafa Kemal, a dog burst out of a hedge and started running toward me. I ran across the street because I fear dogs here. There is no telling if they have rabies or whatever. This did not deter the dog, it followed. I continued running, it followed, and was closing. I knew that I couldn’t outrun it, so I stopped and grabbed the first things that I saw, a half of a brick and a piece of 2×4 and chucked them at him. The 2×4 missed a bit. The brick hit him and he went down with yelp and then skulked off.

I felt terrible, even though he was chasing me and was probably all diseased. I hated that I hurt him. He wasn’t debilitated or anything, but clearly hurt.

I got to the coffee shop, visibly shaken, and explained what had happened to my friends. One of them is an NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) coach, and he suggested that I let him fiddle around with my brain later that evening and he would try to remove the anxiety that I have about dealing with the internet problems.

I was desperate at that point and on the verge of developing a terrible Xanax problem because I have been taking it to stave off my burgeoning general anxiety disorder, so I agreed. We went back to his house and I let him open up my skull and poke around with my cognitive associations.

In about two hours he managed to rid me of the internet anxiety completely. After the first round, he asked me how I felt about having to deal with them and I just laughed my ass off. Whenever anyone says the word “internet” to me now I can’t control myself from smiling or even laughing out loud. It’s brilliant. Worked like a charm.

Also, since being here, I have developed a bad habit of watching terrible crime drama shows like CSI and Law and Order. So, I asked Mamoon to turn my desire to watch shit TV into a desire to get work, writing, and studying done.

This also worked like a charm. I can’t even look at a television now. If I even turn the TV on now, I can look at it for about five minutes before I get too antsy and have to turn it off and begin typing or reading or doing my homework. It is brilliant. However, the other night it turned on me.

We went to dinner and then coffee and afterward grabbed a cab. Some of the cabbies here have installed DVD players in their cabs to entertain their fares. This was one such cab, and the DVD screen was installed where the sun visor for the passenger side would have been. This was ridiculously uncomfortable for me. It was like having someone shove a television directly into my brain. Horrible. It made me very nervous, and I was pretty fitful for the next few hours while I studied furiously when I got home.

So, in the end, everything has worked out. I feel great, and am terribly motivated, even though I had to undergo the equivalent of psychological brain surgery. It works. I recommend it most highly.

In the meant time, Egypt hasn’t changed. It’s still the same. This is another lesson. I can’t change Egypt and Egypt can’t change me, but I can certainly change myself and become more adaptable. By hook or by crook, I suppose.

The third-world internet saga continues.

After one full month of attempting to connect my apartment in Alex to the outside world via the internet, I languish in utter defeat. It is not that I have given up so much as that I have been met at every possible turn with stonewalling and prevarication on the part of customer service, sales, and tech employees at various internet service providers.

I finally canceled the contract with the first company and arranged for a connection with another company. This doesn’t mean anything in reality, however, until the actual day of connection, which will likely occur after Ramadan has concluded. It is very difficult here, during Ramadan, to get very much accomplished because the entire country is on limited functionality for a month. Practically every business, public and private institution, bank, etc. keeps considerably shortened hours during this month to the point that rarely can a full day’s work be accomplished.

Keep in mind that I am not being critical without some level of understanding. I have a pretty deep academic understanding of the theology behind Ramadan at this point and myself am fasting right now. It is not that I am unsympathetic to the cause. I just wonder if the status quo system here for coping with this particular practice is really the best it can be.

***As an aside, sort of, as I was writing this post, the internet in the cafe crashed and it is now Saturday, whereas I began writing on Tuesday.***

Who knows? I certainly don’t. It is just interesting to observe what is going on in this place. Ramadan is now over. I am getting reports of things returning to normal. So some things are about to get easier.

I have a bunch of things that I need to post that I haven’t had the time/opportunity to do so. I will be getting around to that this week.

Until then, Cheers. Eid Mubarak.