I Love You, Man.

My home internet travails have finally come to an end. But, as with a lot of problems in Russia, they ended with a little bit of a bang.

An unidentified man called at 10:30pm on Wednesday and agreed to come over and hook up the internet at 6pm the next day. I didn’t know who he was, but he had enough details about me to lead me to believe that our office had put him up to it.

Well, 6pm came and went. At 7pm, he called to say he’d be another 20 minutes. At 8:10pm, he buzzed the apartment. When I retrieved him from the street (the security buzzer in my apartment doesn’t work, which is another huge issue) I couldn’t help but notice the heavy smell of alcohol and cigarettes. He wasn’t exactly wasted, but he was well on his way.

I interrogated him a bit in the elevator. It turned out that he is Lev’s brother (one of our staff) so I figured he was trustworthy enough to let in. In the apartment, he examined the hardware I had hooked up to the computer and the phone line. He did a couple of things and within a few minutes the Internet was up and running.

Apparently, I had plugged the modem in backwards and chosen the wrong settings on the software. I felt about 2 inches tall, since I was quite sober when I attempted it, and a drunk guy was able to fix it in a matter of moments.

After that, his whole tone and speed changed. He went from speaking normally to using that voice you reserve for retarded foreign children. “You see,” he said “you have to put the arrow over the little picture before you click. BEFORE.”

I’d have objected to this type of treatment but I really didn’t have a leg to stand on. I got unrighteously indignant, but I kept it to myself.