Communication Breakdown

Communication breakdown,

It's always the same.

I'm having a nervous breakdown,

Drive me insane.

-Led Zeppelin

The long-running saga of my telecommunications travails continues. My apartment phone is still not hooked up, so we're looking for alternative solutions to DSL to get some internet access.

It all started somewhat inauspiciously. Rachel’s phone rang in class today, and the name displayed was “Lev”, one of the office staff who handles all physical plant issues for us. She answered, but the caller asked for me. She handed me the phone, and I greeted Lev. Only it wasn’t Lev. It was Kirill. Telling me that a man named Igor would meet me at my place at 3pm to install the internet.

Igor came by at 4pm and asked me a battery of questions. Where would I like the internet installed and where do I usually use my computer? The answer to both questions is the living room. Ahh, he said – that’s impossible – you’ll have to place the internet jack in the kitchen.

It’s becoming clear that a standard tactic here is to ask someone’s preference and then reject their suggestion as crazy. While all the time that other person had his own, secret preference. I tried to set up a meeting at 10 am, for example. The response was that we’ll never get everything done if we start so late. Ok, I countered, How about 8 am? That’s ridiculous, of course. Well, 9am? That’s more like it.

Anyway, Igor maintained that, unfortunately, it’s too beautiful an apartment to indiscriminately drill holes in the masonry to install wires. Indiscriminate drilling, apparently, is their standard practice. Instead, we’ll have to run a cable over the roof, drill through the kitchen wall and place the jack under the window next to the radiator. That sounded indiscriminate enough. Of course, no one was prepared to start drilling through walls – so Igor walked around and hypothesized about ideal installations. Hmmm, he said, stroking his chin. Come in through the roof in the hallway, drill through the hallway wall into the closet in my apartment and install a wireless router. I think he saw my Ipod, laptop, and PDA and was trying to impress me. Or wring another $150 out of me. Either one.

The bad news from Igor is that they couldn’t possibly come any earlier than the end of next week. Which is installation-guy code for “at least 2 weeks from now”.

That’s unfortunate, because I sort of wore out my welcome at the nearest internet café. I walked in the other night – one of several nights in a row. The same attendant I’ve dealt with on each visit stood up as I entered, looked me right in the eye and placed a sign on the desk; Technical Break. I stood around cooling my heels for a few minutes, and decided it would be better to wait in the pleasant Moscow evening air than in what, in effect, is the basement of a casino.

As I walked outside, I noticed the attendant lighting a fresh cigarette off the embers of a previous one. So much for a technical break. After the second cigarette, I followed him back inside (at a discreet distance) and when he was comfortably seated at his desk - having slowly taken down the sign, put away his cigarettes, and carefully readjusted his monitor - he looked up at me with a completely blank expression and asked, “What can I do for you?”.

I guess I didn’t react with as much studied indifference as I should have.

So, 2 factors in this little story nag me:

1. I'm still trying to piece together why Kirill used Lev's phone to call Rachel in order to tell me that Igor would be coming over.
2. Is the effort to find a non-telephone delivered internet solution a sign of total capitulation on the possibility of getting an actual phone in a reasonable period of time?