June 12, 2005
Two months of disconnect
Last year while in Italy I was cut off from good connectivity with the Internet and felt my IQ drop about 20 points. (You mean I have to remember things now instead of going back and getting them in Google?)
In our apartment, we had no telephone. That surprised me until I realized that land line phones are regulated everywhere. We were renting for a couple of months. When I asked about what do I do about a phone my blonde realty lady just shrugged her shoulders and said, "cellulare" - pronounced something like "shell u larry". The photo shows her talking with the owner as the owner's agent puts the hard sell on me and my camera. As we looked through the place, I realized that this made things simple as could be compared to the past when you had to worry about sub-letting the phone line to tenants because starting and stopping phone service could be really slow. We ended up renting from a different realty company, but we got NO PHONE, NO DSL, because we were non-residents and without a year-long lease, the Italian phone company will not hook you up.