The internet
connection here at home has been down for nearly a week… and I've been too busy
to tie up half an hour with our ISP to trouble-shoot. So meanwhile, all this
past week I've been building up a collection of puns, tirades, heart-wrenchers,
and so on.
Late this
afternoon I finally called our Service Provider (I won't mention their name…
but… Can you hear me now? Goood!). The fellow with whom I finally
connected, after jumping through some voice-menu hoops, had a predictably
strong Hindi accent, belying the name he gave for himself: Ivan. We repeated
the steps I'd tried a couple times earlier this week – power down each unit
(router, modem, computer), then twiddle thumbs while counting five-dozen
chimpanzees.
This time it
took; likely Ivan gave the line a hard wrist-flick from Hyderabad, inducing a
twist that zipped all the way down the line to my end, straightening the kink…
much like you'd do with a twisted extension cord. Actually, it's a bit more
likely, though, that a hard thunderstorm last week induced e-catatonia in the
modem as well.
Anyway, once
I'd confirmed things were up again and that our work was done, I thanked Ivan…
in Hindi: "Bahut dhanyawad, mera dost!" He sputtered a moment, then
began laughing… but I believe India-side regs prohibit him from speaking
anything other than English, so he didn't respond in Hindi. I gave him a final
"Namaste!", and hung up.
Small
world.
Maybe next
time I should try Gujarati?
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