We Have Internet!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Honestly, I'm still in shock that I actually have internet at our house. We've only been in the house almost a month without it. I think at some point I had just about given up any hope of actually getting a DSL connection here. But, we have it! It's great!

Of course, in true India style, it wasn't what I would call a "normal" process in connecting it. Yesterday, our landlord had called me to see if I would be around this morning, because the company (government ran) wanted to come do the connection. OK, no problem. The landlord said that they would be coming between 9:30 and noon. Well noon came today, and still nobody had shown up. Generally if this happens here in India, chances are they aren't coming any time soon...at a minimum they'll be at least a couple of hours late. After all, the satellite people were suppose to come back yesterday morning to fix the cable TV, and they still haven't shown up. Well low and behold, at 12:05, the internet people show up. You all know the old joke...how many people does it take to change a light bulb? Same thing applys here with hooking up the internet. Not one, not two, not three, but four people show up to basically plug the modem in. To be fair, one of them was actually the electrician who wired the house, but the other three were all from the internet company.

The first thing I asked them when they walked in was how many connections I was getting. I said I wanted at least three if not four connections (not asking a lot since we do have 3 computers plus an internet phone). The response I received was basically..."sorry madam, but only one connection is allowed." Seriously?

Then they want to know how many telephones I have in the house. I say "three." Again, the response "sorry madam, but only one telephone connection is allowed." Seriously?

From what I gather, the telephone and broadband connection is all on one line. By having more than one phone plugged in, it splits up the connection and either there won't be an internet connection or it would be really, really slow...sorry, I'm not the most tech savvy person in the world, so I'm not quite sure I'm understanding this correctly but I think this is the basics behind it. Anyway, two of the three telephones had to be unplugged in order to hook the internet up.

Anyway, the people from the internet company did tell me that I could have some "systems" people come in to split my internet connection so that I can hook up more than one computer at a time. I'm trying to avoid going with a wireless router, mainly because our internet phone and one of the computers doesn't have wireless capability. Anyway, I'm guessing that these "systems" people are not with the internet company. I'll have to figure out who exactly "systems" people are. Also, the electrician is coming back in a couple of days to rewire something because I guess the current wiring is making our internet connection be slow. I don't know...it seems pretty fast to me. I'm almost inclined to tell him not to touch anything...why fix something that isn't broken? So, in a couple of days, if I disappear again, you'll know what happened. The rewiring went haywire! In the meantime though, I'm just happy to have something...some internet is definitely better than no internet!

Of course, the true test for the day was to see if our internet phone would work. I unplug the computer's internet connection and plug in the telephone. Go to make lunch because it takes a few minutes for the phone to configure and work. Come back...and the phone isn't working. Ughh! Start to get frustrated, but before doing anything drastic...like throwing the phone across the room, I determine that I forgot to bring a drink to eat with my lunch. Go get drink, come back, and low and behold, the internet phone appears to be working (I guess I wasn't patient enough in giving it time to load). Anyway, it is now around 1pm...who am I going to call to make sure that the phone is in fact working? Let's see 1pm here is like 2:30am in the U.S. Who should I wake up out of bed? Being the nice person I am, I decide to actually call my friend in Beijing who also has the same internet phone. As Beijing is 2 1/2 hours ahead of Chennai, no problem in waking her up. She is actually at home, and I talk to her for over an hour. It is sort of weird to call a U.S. telephone number from India to reach someone in China. Anyway, currently it is now 3:30pm here...which means it is 5am in the U.S....still too early to call parents? OK, maybe I'll be nice and let them sleep a couple of more hours. After all, I have a month of e-mails and news to catch up on!