Some things take a while

I’ve been living in my new apartment for about a month now and am very comfortable.  I was surprised when I didn’t have to wait for the gas, water and electricity to be turned on.   All it took was a phone call!  After all the stories I’ve heard about Italian utilities, this was something to be grateful for.

But I guess something had to give.

I ordered a phone and ADSL package right away, as I knew this could be a little more complicated and could take a while.  And boy is it taking a while!  I ordered it on the 6th of December, and still have nothing.  To the phone/internet company’s credit, they called me right away on my cell phone after I ordered, and sent a local technician to me in just a couple of days to get my phone line up and running.  Alas, there was little he could do.  See, my street name is confusing and easily leads people to think that I live in a particular fraction of Perugia, rather than Perugia itself.  So, the technician was from that fraction, and apparently can’t work in Perugia.  The technician was really nice and said they would take care of it for me, in terms of calling someone who actually operated in Perugia, and sending them my way.  I was content with this.  The good news is, he had a look around, and my apartment has a couple of phone outlets and there is already a physical phone line.  So at least there won’t be anything complicated to do in that regard.

But, nothing.  With Christmas around the corner I had a feeling it would be this way, so I just decided to live with it until the New Year.  Why swim upstream?  This week things should go back to normal in terms of business and we plan on making a few phone calls and getting all of this taken care of.  In the meantime, I’m using R’s office every day.  I thank him for his kindness and I hope he doesn’t get sick of me before long.

Not having internet at home has changed my work pace a bit, naturally.  My time is limited so I have to work a lot harder and faster (I need the internet to do research and check up on terms, etc., as well as to keep in touch with clients).  So I get the translations done and then while I’m at home with no internet, I proofread.  On one hand, it’s nice to get my work done and go home, but on the other hand, I want to work smarter, not harder.  But, that’s just the way it is right now.

Nights are lonely without the internet.  It’s amazing how much I rely on it.  I keep myself occupied, though: I read, write, sing, dance, bake cookies, and mop the floor.   Now that I have time (i.e. time not being used to surf the net) I clean the whole house almost every day.  But I’d rather be Skype-ing with relatives and friends in the US and Argentina, who are several hours behind me.  So hopefully this will get resolved soon.