One whole day sans internet!

Yesterday morning around 9 am a awoke to the clattering of roof tiles being removed from a currently vacant house two doors down. There was a crane sitting smack dab in the middle of the alley making it completely impassable. Fine. This happens all the time on the island. You round a corner and there's a funeral or wedding reception blocking your normal route. C'est la vie. You adjust. On this morning I had no where to be anyway. They're not being too noisy so who cares? And if they were being noisy there wouldn't be a god damn thing I could do about it anyway. So I sauntered to the kitchen, put the kettle on and made my way to the computer.

RED light on my ADSL box. No signal. Try again. Nothing.

The first curse words of the day form in my mouth and make their way out into the room. I hate swearing in the morning before I have my coffee! Shit!

Maybe it's an anomoly. Try the phone. Dead. Damn. Something's definitely amiss.

I walk outside. Construction, or destruction more accurately, continuing unabated. I'm starting to think the jackass in the crane clipped something. I begin to mentally berate and insult him.

I check with my neighbor. "...you dian hua ma?", "Mei you."

"Wang lu ma?", "...ye mei you."

We then confirmed to each other that this was indeed hao ma fan de shr qing.

Later when the crane had left, we went to investigate and discovered there was a huge gouge out of the cable that runs along the neighbors wall. To me it was obvious someone had dropped the ball and scraped where he shouldn't have scraped. The destruction company said they'd fix it and not to worry.

When?

Maybe Monday. Monday? Not good enough. How horrifying! A weekend without my precious internet? This sucks! This aggression will not stand, man!

And how exactly would a company that removes roof tiles be equipped to repair a damaged phone/ADSL line?

This was beyond me so I called Chunghua Telecom. Explained the situation. Nothing happened yesterday I think because it was Friday afternoon. (Duh!)

This a.m. I got up to watch Wang Jian-min pitch for the Yanks vs. the D-Rays. I called a second time around 9 using a different number, spoke to a sweet lady in Taipei who ended up dispatching a repairman. About 10:25, my neighbor rang my bell saying the guy was here. Elatedly I went outside to meet him. I wasn't there 3 minutes when he said to go check it. So I did. Connection re-established! All systems were go and ,knock on wood, still are.

So thanks to the efficiency of the Changhua telecom crew I am back online relating this story to you now. Aren't yall just pleased as punch?


Of course I came here first. And what do I see? Old pics of Me! And the Sandstress!

Now I gotta figure out how to recover my notes from Wednesday's Northern Command meeting....

Sweeping changes seem to be in the offing....

Look for possible trades to happen before the deadline on Monday...

One hot rumour is that Management is looking trade Captain Beer for some actual beer.

Takers should contact the GM....