I spent much of the day helping my soon-to-be-ex-neighbor set up my internet connection, meaning pull a telephone wire out his window, untangle it from a tree and some other wires, tossing it onto my roof, an feeding it down my skylight into the living room. Actually I mostly took photos while he did the work. You can't really appreciate from that picture just how many wires were snaked and looped through that tree.
His estimates of when he would come to my house/get stuff done have been 2-24 hours too optimistic, but nonetheless as far as I understand he's done me a huge favor asking nothing in return. Of course I really have no way of knowing if I'm somehow getting screwed over, if he invented or exaggerated the 1500 afghani start-up fee or 3000 afghani monthly cost, but he seems a good guy and those are the same figures cited by the absentee Iranian whose house I'm staying in. That's my share of a total 6000 afghani (about $120) split 50/50 with the new neighbor who's replacing him for 512 kbps service. You see we're reaching an, um informal arrangement, whereby we pay the company for only one high-speed connection and have an ethernet cable reaching from my living room across over the street to them. In theory this makes sense because the new neighbor moving in is a "logistics company" which will be using the internet during then day when I'm out, and I'll have it all to myself in the evening. So instead of each individually paying half as much for a 256 kbps connection we get a connection that will be the same speed when we're both using it (assuming they actually only have one computer as they told me but which I seriously doubt is the case in an office) and twice as fast the majority of the time when only one of us is using it. We'll see how it works once they've moved in, but for the moment my connection is surprisingly fast so far, better than any of the others I've used so far in the country.
And I seem to be getting the better end of the bargain because now the router is in my house, so (as far as I understand) it will work faster on my end and they run the risk that I'll [accidentally] unplug their ethernet cable rather than the other way around. Before it was in the ex-neighbor's house, but I guess it was because he likes us more that we transferred the cables and router to our house. Actually his motives are still very unclear to me.
It goes without saying that $120/month for internet service about 1/30 the speed of a high-speed connection in New York is really expensive. And that's just for the best service using standard 2-copper-wires telephone line rather than the coaxial or fiberoptic high-speed connections--my soon-to-be-ex-neighbor said those cost $500-600 monthly.
More on Mina's backstory:
Previously she'd told me that she was Panjsheeri. It had come up when I noticed that we have a mulberry tree and asked when they'd be ripe. Mina said not to bother with these mulberries; they were no good; I had to try the mulberries in the Panjsheer valley, where she was from.
But as it turned out that though that's where her folks are from originally she's never lived there, and just went there to visit three times with my absentee roommate. She grew up in Kabul but then her family went to Iran when Najubullah was president (so late 80s-early 90s, before the civil war period as usually delineated) and lived in Karaj and Tehran and another town in the area I'd never heard of for 19 years. She got married and had four kids but then her husband died and the cost of living in Iran was too expensive so she had to come back here. She liked Karaj a lot more.
His estimates of when he would come to my house/get stuff done have been 2-24 hours too optimistic, but nonetheless as far as I understand he's done me a huge favor asking nothing in return. Of course I really have no way of knowing if I'm somehow getting screwed over, if he invented or exaggerated the 1500 afghani start-up fee or 3000 afghani monthly cost, but he seems a good guy and those are the same figures cited by the absentee Iranian whose house I'm staying in. That's my share of a total 6000 afghani (about $120) split 50/50 with the new neighbor who's replacing him for 512 kbps service. You see we're reaching an, um informal arrangement, whereby we pay the company for only one high-speed connection and have an ethernet cable reaching from my living room across over the street to them. In theory this makes sense because the new neighbor moving in is a "logistics company" which will be using the internet during then day when I'm out, and I'll have it all to myself in the evening. So instead of each individually paying half as much for a 256 kbps connection we get a connection that will be the same speed when we're both using it (assuming they actually only have one computer as they told me but which I seriously doubt is the case in an office) and twice as fast the majority of the time when only one of us is using it. We'll see how it works once they've moved in, but for the moment my connection is surprisingly fast so far, better than any of the others I've used so far in the country.
And I seem to be getting the better end of the bargain because now the router is in my house, so (as far as I understand) it will work faster on my end and they run the risk that I'll [accidentally] unplug their ethernet cable rather than the other way around. Before it was in the ex-neighbor's house, but I guess it was because he likes us more that we transferred the cables and router to our house. Actually his motives are still very unclear to me.
It goes without saying that $120/month for internet service about 1/30 the speed of a high-speed connection in New York is really expensive. And that's just for the best service using standard 2-copper-wires telephone line rather than the coaxial or fiberoptic high-speed connections--my soon-to-be-ex-neighbor said those cost $500-600 monthly.
And after yet another interlude water is flowing again, and hot. The neighbor and I decided that the pump must be broken because plugging it in made the electrical meter read that it was consuming lots of energy but it did nothing, but the owner showed up this afternoon and discovered that something or other had just burned out and rigged this up:
It works. He says he'll even install a device so the tank automatically refills itself (another neighbor had a minor flood from their roof today, making me feel less stupid for the one I effected from my own tank yesterday). It turns out that the lack of hot water was entirely my own fault--I'd closed off that tap fiddling with the water heater the other day.
At a research institute I visited yesterday they mentioned in passing that a coworker had recently gotten electrocuted attempting such improvisation while standing in a puddle.
Previously she'd told me that she was Panjsheeri. It had come up when I noticed that we have a mulberry tree and asked when they'd be ripe. Mina said not to bother with these mulberries; they were no good; I had to try the mulberries in the Panjsheer valley, where she was from.
But as it turned out that though that's where her folks are from originally she's never lived there, and just went there to visit three times with my absentee roommate. She grew up in Kabul but then her family went to Iran when Najubullah was president (so late 80s-early 90s, before the civil war period as usually delineated) and lived in Karaj and Tehran and another town in the area I'd never heard of for 19 years. She got married and had four kids but then her husband died and the cost of living in Iran was too expensive so she had to come back here. She liked Karaj a lot more.
you should wear rubber shoes at all times!
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