Hi Everyone,
After calling them and getting blown off several times, I finally learned that they don’t have enough equipment to go around, and that they will have to repossess the internet satellite dish and special router power supply of some people who moved off-island or couldn’t/didn’t pay the $80 a month, and give one to me. Supposedly this will be done by the end of this week. We shall see.
The worst part about it may be that the only alternative provider is ASTCA, the American Samoa Telecomin…Something I’m Too Tired to Care. Which is not only my current mood but what their attitude to customer service probably is. They also provide all of the landline phone service to everyone on the island. I was recently talking to a guy who was trying to sell me a car with a cracked windshield and suddenly the phone started ringing in the middle of our conversation and I found myself talking to a very confused woman who only spoke a language that I want to guess was Korean.[1]
Back to getting the Internet. It’s a perfect example of just how slow everything moves here compared to the mainland. A more literal example is traffic. You know how no matter where you go, there’s always some idiot in front of you going five miles under the speed limit? That happens here too, except the speed limit is generally 25. And there’s one road for most of my commute. And there’s no passing allowed on it. Yeah. But I still don’t have a car, so I’m not driving much.
I guess one way to look at it is that you just have to be really patient. Fortunately, I’m an extremely patient guy. I have ADD, which means that without my meds, I have the attention span of a fruit fly.[2] Which means that, outside of my medicated hours of roughly 8AM-7PM weekdays, I move pretty slowly, especially with the unimportant things. So in order to live with myself, I have grown pretty darned patient.
Anywho, I’m really enjoying my new job and am making lots of great commercials, promos and whatnot, a few of which I’ve posted on YouTube. I’d leave you a link, but that’s impossible with a Flash Drive Delay. I also finally got the chance to throw together a picture album on Facebook that everyone can see, but again, I can’t link to it without the Internet handy. Maybe if you’re lucky, I can throw the links in when I post this tomorrow, like I did with that link last week.
(1} Just for the record, I don’t use a landline phone. Blue Sky provides my cell phone service, and while not perfect, it’s generally pretty good.
[2] Now you understand why I keep having all these side-notes and parentheticals!
