It had to happen; 16 months of uninterrupted blogging has hit a blip. On Thursday our telephone line went down taking the internet with it. As our household relies on a permanent link to the outside world almost as much as a regular supply of oxygen, panic soon set in. Ringing the fault line told us that there were unspecified technical problems (we'd worked that one out ourselves) and a sweep of the neighbours showed every other house to be without a dialling tone. Husband set off to find the man in charge and brother-in-law was instructed to send warning shots from Ankara. We managed without for 24 hours then I set off to explore Bodrum's free WiFi spots. This involves drinking a lot of coffee and beer. I politely enquire if WiFi is on offer, a positive reply is exchanged for a beverage and then a password, which in each case DOESN'T WORK! In one cafe, a waiter took the WiFi sign down while I was sitting in front of it. Eventually a kind employee found the staff password and plugged me into the business internet. By this time I was so wired with coffee and beer that thinking straight was not an option.
I even ventured into Starbucks having forsworn this establishment and found that, despite large signs to the contrary, their wifi is as dodgy as their tax situation. After 48 hours off line, I have read a book and a half, which shows me how much good literature I'm missing in my addiction to the screen.
As I walked down to get my daily internet fix for today I came across this scene in one of Bodrum narrow lanes. There's always someone worse off, especially if you leave you car badly parked on a bus route. (The owner of the van came back later and was completely unaware of the traffic chaos he'd caused.)
Normal service will hopefully be resumed very soon.
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my sympathy...one summer when Don and lived here we had two hurricanes...electric lines down both times 3 to 4 days. I wasn't as involved with the internet as I am now and I still had withdrawal symptoms. Of course poor Don didn't have his TV to watch and his electric hospital bed didn't work :) the van in your photo should have known better than to mess with buses. if I'm not mistaken over here they have the right of way...so best not to park where they're meant to be :) hope you're wified soon!!!
ReplyDeleteWe're back on line!
DeleteOh you poor thing! I know what it's like to need that connection to the outside world and being without it is really frustrating - even if you do lots of other lovely things and kick yourself for the addition. Fortunately now, I'm addicted to doing things in my house so I haven't been too bothered, but 48 hours is a long time!
ReplyDeleteGood to hear from you anyway. The parking looks reminiscent of our residents!
Axxx
Despite being hard up against the bus when I took this photo, the van escaped any serious damage.
DeleteIt happens here when the rains start in earnest and the poles go down in the landslips...the latest one was when the pole at the entrance to the valley became so overloaded with transformers and whatnot that it was gave way under the weight...now have three poles...
ReplyDeleteI miss the internet...as much for Skype as anything for keeping in touch with mother, so all my sympathy.
Our problem was because we are all being upgraded - or that's the story
DeleteI knowq just how you feel. We went through all of January and February with no phone line most of the time, and internet on and off constantly (more off than on). I ended up on first name terms with most of the TTNet call centre personnel in Istanbul and calls to TTNet, Milas, mostly went unanswered once they recognised our mobile numbers. What's more infuriating is that no-one ever seems to be able to tell you what the problem is or when it will be fixed. Ours was such a simple problem...wire outside was wet! Fixed in 5 minutes after two months of irritation.
ReplyDeleteHope you get reconnected soon. (Haha I read a lot of books at the time too!)
I thought of you when the line first went off. 50 hours after we companied in Turkish and sent all the messages, nothing had happened, then I phoned 4441444 and asked for the English option, spoke to an adviser, got a text back immediately saying my fault was being worked on. 1 hour later we got a message saying the engineers had turned up at our village house ??? 2 hours later the engineer was here in Bodrum restoring our internet, but not our landline. Our neighbours are still waiting. So recommend you complain in English next time your line goes.
DeleteYes I did use the English option, every time. It didn't work so my husband took over with the Milas office and that didn't work either. Eventually he went into the office and insisted that something was done so that day supervisors from both Turk Telekom and TTNet turned up and discovered the wet wire. They were supposed to come back and put the wire inside the house (where they should have put it in the first place)...its still outside!
DeleteGlad you got your's fixed so quickly. I'd like to say that it proves they are efficient, but I put it down to pure luck!
We were lucky - our neighbours still have neither phone nor internet.
DeleteGood luck to you.... I hopethat Turkish providers are more serious than the French equivalent. In the civilised climes of Eastern France I found myself without phone or internet for six weeks. After two weeks I'd got over the cold turkey, and by the time the phone company finally came up with a solution, I had totally got over the phone and hated hearing it ring again :-)
ReplyDelete6 weeks! I couldn't miss 6 weeks of The Archers.
Delete. . not a jot of sympathy - empathy 'Yes'. You should live up this valley where it ca take more than 5 hours to upload a post to the blog and that's WITH a connection!! We do read a lot of books though ;-)
ReplyDeleteOur village house has better service than the centre of Bodrum.
DeleteMy sympathies Annie - it really makes you wonder how reliant we have become on technology these days for our daily life. I go into an absolute panic if my internet goes off and behave like an alcoholic trying to find a drink:). I have to say though, the last time it went it was a fault with the modem supplied by superonline. I have to give them their due, as withing an hour they were here and replaced the modem and all was back to normal:)
ReplyDeleteThis is our experience in the village - town life seems not so customer considerate.
DeletePoor you. If it's any consolation, we've been without phone, internet and TV on a couple of occasions while Virgin Media 'improved' the service by digging up the road. Haven't really noticed any difference since! What's happened with all the fibre-optic cables they were laying all over town last summer?
ReplyDeleteThis whole problem is caused by the change over to fibre-optic.
DeleteAnnie - you should have gone to the village!
ReplyDeleteWe did today and will be moving back very soon.
DeleteWe also suffer from Internet addiction. Kind of hoping we will get fibreoptic here, though our service is pretty good most of the time. Even after we've used up our meagre quota.
ReplyDeleteOf course, there was that time our phone stopped working and they fixed it upon which the internet promptly stopped working. But that was sorted within about 15 hours - better service than we got in the UK (when BT would blame Virgin and Virgin would blame BT and it took about a year to get problems sorted out).
Usually I have no complaints about our internet service. If it is ever interrupted, the problem is remedied in hours. Just this time we have waited days rather than hours. It's back on now and we've had a call from the Mugla boss's assistant to apologise and giving a number to call if it happens again so I can't complain. In the UK, Orange had me tearing my hair out for weeks trying to get our internet connected.
DeleteYou know, B to B, it's really weird when I have a fit of screaming and yelling if my internet connection is even a bit sluggish and then I think about back in the days of the troglodytes - just 18 or so years ago - when none of this existed! And somehow we had happy and fulfilling lives. It's a bit scary. Anyway, now we're so addicted we don't even want to think about it. Hope all back to normal now.
ReplyDeleteIt is an addiction - and I think some of us "late adopters" are hooked more than is good for our health. When I can't leave the screen to take the dog for long walks - I'll seek help.
DeleteI do hope it gets fixed soon, Annie, if it isn't already. We've had the odd period of severe withdrawal symptoms, mainly because our line from the exchange is long and getting elderly, so is easily damaged by gales and tree branches. Fibre-optic cable is an impossible dream for us, alas. :-(
ReplyDelete