There is so much fun stuff about moving… the stuff that disappears, the inability to find anything you own, the discovery that your water heater doesn’t work right… but my favorite little surprise comes from yesterday’s move, which saw the successful installation of a telephone jack in one room… and the accidental(?) disconnection of all the other jacks in the house. So the phone works… sort of, in one place only.

So I call the number on the card that the technician gave me — “If you have any problems just give me a call!” — and I’m connected to the regular SBC automated system. I go through the system like a good boy and finally get to “Please wait while I connect you to the right department.”

Immediately the system goes to all-Chinese, with no prompt for English.