Sven's life in Oz

I’m back! I decided that connecting up my internet was daft since I was leaving the country for three weeks, so upon my return I set about getting myself back online.  This week I finally received my new modem and got back online, meaning I can blog, tweet and browse from the comfort of my sofa again! (I could do all that with my iPhone, in truth, but the keypad is RSI waiting to happen if I tried serious browsing on that tiny device.)  More importantly, I can get back onto feedly and catch up with everyone else’s blogs…

…erm, maybe not.  I might just have to scrap the lot and start again.  If you read me maybe you could leave a brief summary of your past couple of months in the comments, or pick one or two posts that could bring me up to speed? Thanks so much.

So, my sojourn in the UK is over and there isn’t time to write up everything that happened – it was non-stop from the moment I arrived to the time I left.  Much fun was had and the photos are up on flickr (several of me looking trashed and disheveled, you’ll be delighted to know), but more than that, I learned a few lessons about myself which I think I needed my friends to remind me I already knew.

1. I must write. The number of friends who gave me a serve for not having moved my novel on at all can’t be counted on my fingers.  Having a job where I get to write is good, but it’s not enough for my friends who, for some crazy reason, have faith in me and get disappointed when I’m not fulfilling my potential.  I know, unreasonable, right?  However, it’s not all bad news – this month I am researching my MA options properly, so hopefully I can start study in February.  I need someone to beat me into completion, so I figure an MA is a good way to do that whilst also networking for a future career.  I’ll keep you posted.

2. Being single is nothing to fear. I haven’t really been alone before in my life. Obviously I’ve been on my own, but I’ve never been properly on my own – I’ve always had my family, flatmates or a partner to keep me company. When I visited Liccy and Robin in London and they headed off to work on Monday morning, I think it was the first time I have ever been truly left to my own devices. Nothing depended on my achieving anything that day: I had only myself to please and the whole world to do it in. I went around St Paul’s Cathedral, and walked to Hyde Park Corner, Buckingham Palace and St James’s Park before heading back to meet my hosts for dinner. Some of that was new, some was well-trod, but all of it was my choice – no stopping to eat when someone else was hungry, no going somewhere or missing somewhere else as a compromise.  At the start of the day I was almost paralysed with the prospect; by the end I was pleased with what I had done.  Being alone is no big deal, and certainly nothing to fear.

3. I am a catch. When I discussed with my good friend CaroMel how I was a bit intimidated by dating someone who was older and more successful than I was, she practically jumped down my throat.  “You are brilliant and anyone would be lucky to have you,” she roared vehemently, “don’t let anyone make you feel like you aren’t.”  This is exactly what I say to others in my position but sometimes you need to hear it from someone else to remember that it also applies to you.  (I remember telling my self-deprecating friend Al: “Oh, I’m not having any of that” when he tried to suggest his now wife might be out of his league.  “You’re fantastic. Now get over there and talk to her.”  I’m nothing if not direct.)  No one should intimidate you: we’re all just muddling along as best we can, hoping people see that we dressed for the party and don’t notice our fly is open.  Confidence is sexy: if you’re intimidated by your date, he’s not going to be your date for very long.

4. Friends are food for the soul. No matter what, there is always someone who would be thrilled to hear from you. Good friends give so much, even if you feel like you have so little to give in return.  Even though my holiday wasn’t restful in the traditional sense, being with people with whom you “need be neither brave nor reticent” is a rest in itself.  Starting a new life in another country takes stamina and perseverance, so going home to familiar faces and being able to share the bad stuff as well as the good without seeming to whinge is a relief.  Listening to friends fills up your soul; their stories, their care, their advice all help you to grow.  So long as you have friends, you can do anything.

Leaving England was harder this time, perhaps because it was not the big adventure it was last time, but more likely because I better appreciated what I was leaving behind.  The flight itself was uneventful and I slept most of the way so my jetlag only lasted a couple of days.  Within a week things were back to normal and it was like I had never been away.  My Australian friends were as thrilled to have me back as my English friends had been to see me, and they were keen to fill my diary with all manner of parties and events.  Of course I took them up on the offers, such as tonight’s Sleaze Ball.  I’m still a big bag of insecurity and overconfidence and arrogance and doubt, but I’m damned if that’s going to stop me having a good time.  I am who I am, and life is too short.

A critic once said of the Jodie Foster disaster, Flightplan: ‘If Mt. Everest were a pile of manure, it would be a mere foothill next to this movie’. If the customer service at Tiscali were an equivalent pile of dung, then it would seem similarly dwarfish alongside the monolithic shit-pile that is Bigpond. It is official: they are the worst.

I am now on DAY SIX without internet and it’s beginning to grate. It’s not just the fact that I have to walk up the street to the internet café to check my e-mails, write one lousy twitter and scan through Facebook; there are some practical problems like finding a job, or e-mailing people back about jobs, or chasing up online applications for jobs. Can you see why I’m finding this a problem? I don’t begrudge the internet café for taking my money: it’s just I’m already paying for an internet connection I don’t even have.

This morning, almost one week after I signed up, and two days after I was told I would receive my modem, I decided enough was enough and rang Telstra. Telstra are the telephone company that own/are in cahoots with Bigpond, who are ‘the biggest internet provider in Australia’. When I connected my telephone with Telstra they also did all my internet for me (through Bigpond) so they seemed like the logical place to start.

I spoke to a cheerful young lady who informed she had spoken to several people on my behalf, all while I was on hold. For an hour and a half. She even retrieved my call at one stage to tell me that she had called someone who didn’t deal with this type of thing, and was being put through to someone else. I was in a telephone chain of hold music. After an hour and forty-five minutes I decided enough was enough, and since she wasn’t going to get any joy I might as well ring Bigpond myself.

The first chap, Mark, was very helpful. He explained the problem (Telstra had set up the internet before the phone line and as a result, the system returned an error, cancelling the set-up) and said he would sort it all out while I was on the phone. Thirty minutes later whilst he was trying to retrieve me from muzak-limbo he cut me off. (I assume he was trying to get me back: he may in fact have intended to cut me off. Let’s try to stay positive.) I rang back.

Krishnan was less helpful, but promised to keep me on hold for less time while he investigated, despite my protesting that I didn’t want to go back there again. Forty minutes later I was still waiting. By this time my head hurt, my ears were bleeding and my plans for the day were in ruins. I should have given up but after three hours I wanted some kind of result. Unreasonable, aren’t I?

Eventually Krishnan returned and told me that his system had crashed.

“Can you call back later today?’ he enquired.

“That’s really not my problem. After three hours, why don’t you just sort it out and call me back?”

“You want it done today?” he asked. I think I physically staggered back at this point, utterly lost for words. “I’ll just put you through.” He had been holding out on me: there was a secret department who could just sort these things out with a few simple taps on their keyboard. It’s like magic! It’s almost as though they were connected to my house by fibre-optic cable and all they needed to do was tell a server what to do with a click of their mouse! The line went dead for a moment, before the dulcet brogue of the Bigpond voiceover artist returned.

“Welcome to Bigpond. If you would like to speak to sales, press 1…”

I was back at the start menu.

This time I hit the roof. Screw Option 2; I’m past checking the status of my order. I’m in the mood for pressing 3 because I am someone under the “thinking about leaving Bigpond?” category now. Cue Andrew.

“May I ask why you are thinking about leaving Bigpond?”

“Well, I’m have to complain about the service before I’ve even been connected.” I said. Andrew made some suitably commiserate noises while I ran though my ordeal with him; and he did not put me on hold while he investigated, for which I am very grateful.

“The problem is an error status that I can’t comment on,” he told me.

“Mark already told me what the problem was and how it happened,” I said. “He also said he would sort it out before he cut me off.”

“Well, this is a problem that has to be escalated, and then someone will call you over the next couple of days, sort it out and then send out the modem to you.”

“The modem that takes five days to arrive?’

“Yes.”

“So I have to wait three days for a call, then five days for a modem so that I can use an internet service I ordered a week ago?”

“Well, they do tend to get these things sorted out pretty quick smart, Sven -“

“How long is pretty quick smart in days and hours, Andrew?” And that was when we entered the contain-the-angry-madman-I’m-only-trying-to-help script, which involved him submitting a form online (because my wounds weren’t salty enough) and both of us kicking back for a couple of days while they think about responding.

Some questions:

1. Why keep me on hold? I mean, seriously: it serves a purpose but when the call starts running over say, an hour, shouldn’t you think about letting the caller go and ringing them back?
2. Why didn’t anyone else know about the ‘escalation’ process? Is it a Bigpond special for really shitty customers?
3. Finally, why the hell are they ringing me back? They know what I want – internet access – and they know when I want it: yesterday. What the hell am I going to do at my end? Stick my arm in the phone socket and give them blood?

Before I came to Australia, everyone told me that the price I would pay for a more relaxed lifestyle would be continual stress at people who don’t do things at an appropriate speed. They were right it seems, and considering we’re talking about superfast broadband, poetic to boot.

It turns out Rhys is a thoroughly upstanding member of the community and utterly useful to know.  And he only lives one floor down from me.  We had a lovely chat about the building: who lives where; who to meet and who to run from; when the last break-in was; where to eat/shop/avoid; and how much the rent has increased over the past three years.  All in all, he was very informative.

As for why he was advertising his number on his wireless network: he was trying to reduce the cost of his internet by sharing it with other people in the building.  Apparently $20 a month is too much for him (seriously?  We pay $60 and that’s the introductory rate) and he had some bandwidth going so he tried to sell it off.  He’s been punting his wares for the past three years and how many people have rung him to take him up on the offer?  One.  Yes, I am the only person to have called him since he got connected.

The mystery is solved, and far from living in some sort of drug-dealing, vice-ridden sub-let of a brothel, I live in a nice building where the neighbours talk to one another and they don’t mind if you ring them at 9pm on a Monday night after a couple of glasses of wine and tell them you found their number on the internet.  Everyone’s a winner.

So thanks for the advice, everyone: it worked out well.  Next challenge: wangling an invite to the frat parties the obscenely young and fantastically well-built Americans living beneath us are bound to have.  All ideas welcome.

Life without any furniture is hard enough.  Life without internet access is almost impossible.  It’s like having having an arm chopped off (but without the pain, or the blood.  Perhaps this isn’t the best analogy).  Since Telstra won’t connect us till next Monday or Tuesday at the earliest, that leaves us all day Friday, all weekend, and maybe even the start of next week with no connection to the world wide web.  There could be e-mails waiting, twitters unread, or blog comments demanding attention and I wouldn’t know about it.  It simply won’t do.

The benefit of living in an up-and-coming apartment block in an up-and-coming area of the city (apart from the astronomical number of outlet stores in the vicinity) is that everyone in the building has wireless internet access.  Of course everyone password protects their internet, but there’s always one that didn’t RTFM and it’s just a matter of finding that spot where you can hitch on their signal for a few days and hope they don’t switch off their modem while you are BitTorrenting ‘The Tudors’.

This being a mac, joining a network is straightforward – just look at the list and pick one.  (I don’t know if a PC is more difficult, but when the Shut Down is in the Start menu it’s safe to assume the worst.)  There’s the usual suspects – netgear, D-Link, belkin etc – and these are your best bet for a free ride: if you can’t change the name of your router you probably can’t change the security settings either.  Sure enough, I write to you now courtesy of a lovely little network named ‘linksys’.

Next come the named networks; these are probably password protected and harder to hijack.  Still, a casual browse through the names gives you some idea of the people around you.  What an eye-opener!  Aside from the common or garden ‘Pete’s wireless’ or ‘Number 15′, our building seems to have some pretty ropey stuff going on.  ‘Jamescruise1′ is positively tame when listed underneath ‘man-pit’,  but both of these pale into prudish insignificance when faced with the mighty ‘Call 04120384X5′.  Perhaps I’m allowing the previous names to influence my thinking on this – ‘man-pit’ is hard to get out of your head – but how many innocent reasons are there for having your mobile number in your wireless network name?

It’s a 21st Century pool of Tantalus: ring it and resolve the mystery, or leave it.  I’m seriously considering the first option.  What would you do?