Athens, Greece
Gyrometer: 6
Nothing seems to work anymore. Nothing.
My mini computer manufactured by Dell, the most incompitent company in the universe, has crashed again, just like it did in Italy two months ago. Again, all of my data is gone and my Internet connection is dead. I am now blogging by hand -- literally -- writing in a notebook with a pencil and entering my throughts at cybercafes when opportunities arise. I imagine this is a little bit how computers worked in the 19th century.
Faced with a travel emergency when I arrived in Athens on Saturday, I went to my hotel's business center to use their overpriced Internet connection. But thanks to another technical glitch at Dreamhost (the other most incompitent computer company in the world, and the people who host my main website... for not much longer), I could not access my e-mail at a moment when I desperately needed to track down the phone number of the lead guide I am working with on my tour.
After an hour of screaming profanities at an uncaring computer momitor, I finally did locate David's mobile phone number. When I phoned him, however, he did not answer because his phone was not working.
Meanwhile, he was also trying to phone me from another phone. But my phone was not working either, thanks to misinformation I received from my mobile provider. When I switched to AT&T Wireless last month, the guy who sold me my new phone assured me I could take out the AT&T SIM card (the chip that determines the phone number and provider) and replace it with a European SIM card. He promised me the phone was not "locked," blocking the use of other SIM cards. That was not true.
From Greece, I called the guy who sold me my phone in America. He told me to call AT&T and they would give me a code to unlock the phone. At this point I entered a web of voice mail that asked me repeatedly whether I spoke English or Spanish and then disconnected me a couple of times. Finally, I reached a human being (or something slightly resembling one) who told me AT&T did not have that information and I would have to call Nokia. Nokia said no, only AT&T had that information. I called the guy at the phone store back, who promised to sort out the problem and leave the code I needed on my home voice mail in Seattle. I never heard from him again.
I am beginning to miss the days before e-mail and mobile phones and cheap phone cards, when I used to give my friends a simple address to write to me: "Dave Fox, Poste Restante, Athens, Greece." I'd stop by the post office when I was in Athens, hoping to receive two-week-old news from home.
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