Feeling Productive, Utterly Reliant

Working away on things around 5:55AM.  Going back from an article in the “paper” to an email draft, uncharacteristically streaming Brahms' Sextet for Strings No. 1 in B flat Major Op. 18 on Youtube, enjoying the calm, feeling productive, utterly reliant on the internet to sustain this flow.  Soon it will be time to pack up and head out on the morning ride to the gym.

I turn to Gmail to reference an email I need and the service hangs.  “loading.”  Could be hung.  It happens.  This computer’s had a few years and even with updated software it isn’t as responsive as it once was.  Lab rat like, I turn to eat the down-time on an editorial I’d passed up in the Washington Post on my last glance through the home page  It’s hung too.  I go to a new tab and try to enter “google” and the browser informs me there is no internet connection.  That doesn’t necessarily mean what it means.  The next thing to do is check the VPN and it also produces the electrocardiogram flat line of death.  Moving on diagnostically, I enter "Baidu" into a browser.  Perhaps I’ve been confined to things domestic for one or another reason, but this also does not yield anything.  Now I’m in trouble.  I pick up the land line phone to my left and dial my own mobile.  Before I can finish dialing I get a tart woman's voice in Chinese on the line informing me that the bill hasn’t been paid.  OK.  Now we know.  We really don’t have any internet.  6:00AM on a new day must be when they pull the plug. 

I wish I could hop on-line and settle it.  Or call someone on my mobile and pay by credit card.  Perhaps you can.  But what we always wind up doing is driving over to the physical Unicom store and paying at a machine they have there.  And that ain’t gonna happen before a must-do conference call I have at 8:00AM.  My wife’s still asleep.  Letting her lie, I inform her with a wechat message and head off to the gym where, fortunately I won’t need the internet. 

Later, she’s over at the store and the machine demands the name on the account.  I remind her of our landlord’s name.  “I know!” she writes back. "I need the specific Chinese characters".  We’ve never needed this before.  OK.  I write the landlord, he writes me, I write her and she writes me back to say, “It still doesn’t work.”  Well.  I ask the landlord if it might not be in his wife’s name, and the front desk gives me the name of someone under whom the account was listed back in 2008, just in case we want to try a name other than the one it should properly be assigned to. 

It’s frustrating.  Fortunately, I do have a 4G connection.  I can connect with my must-do meeting and everything limps along alright without access to our account, till later in the day, my wife manages to settle, without this mystery name at a bank nearby.  It won’t be long till I have another such entry, I’m sure, informing you that the electricity suddenly went out at a time I really needed it, as well.  Keeps ya’ limber.  Embrace the uncertainty.

Wednesday, 01/09/19