Technological Lapse
Me and technology in Latin America, we don't get along. After buying a SIM card I was told would give me Internet service for one peso a day, and that turning out to be spectacularly untrue, I went on Monday to Claro to buy a SIM card. Since then, the secondhand Blackberry I bought from a guy with family in Miami has declared: tarjeta SIM rehazada. Basically, the thing doesn't work, puta. After 24 hours, I go back, take a ticket, sit down in a blue plastic chair and wait for one of the youngish employees who I cynically imagine is distracted wasting time on the Internet to announce my ticket has come up.
An associate with a short hair cut and what must be a gradually improving complexion inserts a tester chip into my phone. With the tester chip, the dreaded message goes away. Phew. It's not me; it's not the ghetto phone; it's just the chip. He cracks open the thick plastic packaging around a new Claro chip, slips it into the BB and we watch as it loads. tarjeta SIM rehazada. CHINGAR!
Today I walk with purpose to the sucursal. I walk inside but don't bother to remove my fake Ray Bans as a retire to the accustomed blue chair. My ticket comes up and, after I wait for what is probably the end of a Google chat, the associate tells me it is very strange but that I am not the only one with this problem; there are many people who can't get service, whose tarjetas SIMS are rechazadas.
In Mexico City, I had no cellphone signal in my apartment, unless the phone was precisely balanced on a rather inconvenient water tank in the center of the patio. Acquiring Internet service was as amusing as it was terrifying. Two men, one rather young, appeared in late morning and immediately asked me how they could get to the roof. For the rest of the day and into the night (we even left them there, reluctantly, to go to dinner) they toiled among the clotheslines, making trips back and forth to the company truck parked out front for different tools and cables. Around 10, they left, and I had Internet. For really a great deal of the time.
The landline, however, was never quite installed. I chose a company that seemed to me the underdog in the Mexican telecom market. In naive defiance to Mexico's monopolistic ways, I placed my faith in it. Yet, when I paid them for landline service, the installation was no more certain. Scraps of phone cord and bits of metal remained on my kitchen floor after the service guy left. At times, the number took calls. Other times, made them, but never the two a la misma vez. When the service was cut, I didn't bother to restore it. And the tenant who moved in after me still receives bills.
An associate with a short hair cut and what must be a gradually improving complexion inserts a tester chip into my phone. With the tester chip, the dreaded message goes away. Phew. It's not me; it's not the ghetto phone; it's just the chip. He cracks open the thick plastic packaging around a new Claro chip, slips it into the BB and we watch as it loads. tarjeta SIM rehazada. CHINGAR!
Today I walk with purpose to the sucursal. I walk inside but don't bother to remove my fake Ray Bans as a retire to the accustomed blue chair. My ticket comes up and, after I wait for what is probably the end of a Google chat, the associate tells me it is very strange but that I am not the only one with this problem; there are many people who can't get service, whose tarjetas SIMS are rechazadas.
I am losing working time. This is my third time here this week, and I have to take time traveling here. I don't live upstairs! I say in my angriest voice.
--Mira a lo que pasó a Movistar por su falta de servicio. ¡El gobierno esta cargándolos una multa y vos támbien si no esté fijada!
--No, pero...Pues, sí, pero van para todo...
We had a laugh, but it was not funny.
In Mexico City, I had no cellphone signal in my apartment, unless the phone was precisely balanced on a rather inconvenient water tank in the center of the patio. Acquiring Internet service was as amusing as it was terrifying. Two men, one rather young, appeared in late morning and immediately asked me how they could get to the roof. For the rest of the day and into the night (we even left them there, reluctantly, to go to dinner) they toiled among the clotheslines, making trips back and forth to the company truck parked out front for different tools and cables. Around 10, they left, and I had Internet. For really a great deal of the time.
The landline, however, was never quite installed. I chose a company that seemed to me the underdog in the Mexican telecom market. In naive defiance to Mexico's monopolistic ways, I placed my faith in it. Yet, when I paid them for landline service, the installation was no more certain. Scraps of phone cord and bits of metal remained on my kitchen floor after the service guy left. At times, the number took calls. Other times, made them, but never the two a la misma vez. When the service was cut, I didn't bother to restore it. And the tenant who moved in after me still receives bills.
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