Today when I woke up, I was certain the sky was bluer, the streets smelled better, and I could hear "I'm Walking on Sunshine" playing happily in my head. You see, today was the day I was getting internet installed in my apartment.
I had lived without it for 2 weeks, but somehow I'd made due. Sometimes I would randomly get a weak connection from within my apartment, but it was always hit or miss. I felt like the travelers on the Oregon Trail must have felt, never knowing what each day would bring. Would I find a signal today? Or would I have to make the treacherous journey down to the coffee shop on the corner, risking smallpox and dysentery, or possibly breaking the heel of my shoe, the modern day equivalent of a broken wagon wheel? And what's worse, I had to cope with the agony of wondering, would the coffee shop even be open? Would I be able to find a seat near a power outlet? The questions plagued me daily, and the uncertainty haunted my dreams.
So today was the big day. I would finally be able to fulfill my dreams of whiling away the hours on Facebook, watching Family Guy, listening to The Ticket, and reading The Onion, as god intended it.
You can imagine my surprise and distress when my co-teacher received a call from Internet Installer Guy this morning asking if my computer was in my apartment. I answered yes, trepidaciously, because why would he want to know that? I was immediately filled with what I imagine mother's protection instinct to be like.
I don't have any pets, and my laptop is the closest thing to one.* Yes, of course she has a name, it's Maxine. What would I call her if she didn't have a name? Laptop? You wouldn't expect me to call my offspring Kid, would you? That would be absurd. Unless I was Kidd Kraddick's mom, I guess, but I still maintain that the name is pretty ridiculous.
So for whatever reason, Internet Installer Guy was trying to get onto Internet Explorer on Maxine, and he couldn't because Maxine is a Mac (hence the name) and Macs don't have Internet Explorer, they have Safari. Apparently there are not very many Macs here in Korea, so he didn't know what Safari was. After a lot of confusing conversation between Mrs. Kim and me and then back to Internet Installer Guy, he eventually left my place. Mrs. Kim said I should bring my laptop to school the next day and have the computer teacher figure out what I needed to do.
This distressed me for numerous reasons. First, I didn't understand why he needed to even touch Maxine to install a modem in my apartment. I had always been under the impression that you just need to flip a switch or something and then my place would be wired for internet, and all I would have to do is plug in. Second, it was especially frustrating because it was a test day here at school, so I wasn’t doing anything other than being held hostage in the teachers’ lounge anyway, looking up stuff on the internet. Thirdly, trying to explain the existence of numerous types of web browsers to my computer illiterate co-teacher with my limited computer knowledge + the language barrier was like a comedy of errors. (She even asked me if I had ever even gotten on the internet with my computer - I guess since I didn't have Internet Explorer she thought that might have been an impossibility - and I was like, PLEASE, of course I have.) Except it stopped being funny when I realized that lastly, I wasn't getting internet on my big day.
Disappointment consumed me, but I was down, but not out. I had lost a limb, but I was still trekking along with the Willamette Valley in my sights, determined not to let a little thing like typhoid dissuade me. After I had explained the concept of the Safari compass and where it was located on the screen, I had heard Mrs. Kim mumble something about 'drivers' and I thought, there is no way in hell I am letting this man touch Maxine's drivers. He didn't even know how to get to the internet on my computer - what kind of mother do they think I am? I wouldn't let a veterinarian operate on my son, and I wasn't going to let this guy touch the drivers on my Mac. Luckily another of my co-teachers offered to call Internet Installer Guy back after this first failed attempt and told him that if he could just install the modem, I could figure the rest out.
So that's where I stand. Haven't been home yet, don't know what I will find there. At this point I will consider myself lucky if Maxine is unharmed, but I am hoping against hope that I will have made it to my goal destination. If not, I'll have to spend another few days trying to catch that weak signal, or as I like to think of it, using flint and stone to make fire somewhere out on a lonely western prairie.
*Not including my favorite purse, Fluffy, and my iPhone, Penny.
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