You Can't Make Mistakes.

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.