Still no Internet

Today I was supposed to get Internet installed at last. Utterly unsurprisingly (after all, I come from the Land of Telstra, which sets new lows for telecommunications services), evening has come, and lo, I am still Internet-less.

Basically they needed to get into some kind of distribution box for my apartment building, and the telco had a key for it already. But then there ended up being a second box for which they *didn't* have a key, and predictably, my apartment's connections were in the second box. Of course, since I can't speak Japanese, I couldn't understand the engineer's explanations, or contact my owner, or contribute anything of use.

To the telco's credit, once I found out my real estate agent's name and number, they sorted out everything, contacted my owner to arrange to get the key, etc. The other exceptional thing about utilities companies here is that if they call and say 'I will be here in fifteen minutes' - guess what? - they actually come in fifteen minutes. In Australia you can be left waiting several hours and wondering whether the installation guy has dropped off the face of the earth.

(Incidentally, did you know that I live in a mansion? Sadly the word has a totally different meaning here in Japan, but nonetheless, I live in a mansion. :))

Normally I would become very cross indeed, especially since they can't now come back until the 22nd. That's 12 days away! And there are many, many things I am waiting to do on the Internet. I want to look up info on Japan, send emails, look up maps, stream the local Aussie radio stations, watch The Chaser, look up info on English grammar, surf YouTube, and - of course! - use Skype so I can finally talk to people properly!

For a week now I've really had no Internet access at all. Sure, if I get the laptop in just the right position, I can possibly access my email after several minutes and several refreshes. But most pages simply fail to load at all. Some days I can't access anything. The other day I tried for an hour just to open one page, and it wouldn't. So I certainly can't use the Internet for, well, anything... It has taken me a full half an hour to get onto Blogger so I can post this (I have been refreshing and refreshing as I type this.)

Somehow I have responded with uncharacteristic patience and didn't feel too upset (I think I was just relieved that the telco was looking after everything and making all these calls on my behalf). Though of course I am none too pleased. I think in general I am a bit more patient here. Like I will get lost for an hour and not care that much. Or take the wrong train and just go and take another one. I daresay this is not a permanent personality change but a side-effect of the novelty of things.

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Anyway, still can't get online to post this so what to say next? Hmm... Jim had the day off sick today. He was looking pretty unwell yesterday... 'The system' is not well suited to unexpected sick days. I was able to take on two of his classes, and the head teacher took one, but the other two had to be cancelled as no other teachers could be brought in.

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Right now we are having students write New Year's resolutions. My advanced-level class was the first class where I didn't give any examples of resolutions, as I figured they would be familiar with the concept. When I read the resolutions later, all of them were variations on 'I want to improve my English', except one guy who had written 'I want to do more listening to jazz this year'.

At least he's set himself an achievable goal, right?