bktheirregular

Today's headache is brought to you by the letters O, T, and E.

I don't know what that particular three-letter acronym would mean in English, but in Greece, OTE means «Οργανισμός Τηλεπικοινωνιών Ελλάδος», "Organismos Tilepikinonion Ellados", or "Hellenic Telecommunications Organization".

And they sometimes behave like AT&T in the bad old days.

Got a call from them yesterday (Tuesday the 9th), notifying me that they were doing infrastructure upgrades to their networks, and as part of it, I could upgrade my DSL line without any increase in my phone bill. After assurances that there wouldn't be any problems with equipment during the switchover, I finally decided to agree to it. They tell me that they'll be delivering a new VDSL modem-router, free of charge, on Friday the 12th.

Wednesday the 10th (which is today) rolls around, and when I go to check my work e-mail before heading out the door to schlep to the office, suddenly I can't connect to the office Gmail system. I check a couple of other sites and notice that they're not connecting either; I check my router stats page and find there's no connection; I reset the router, still no connection; I pick up my landline phone and there's no dialtone.

I grab my cell phone, call OTE Customer Service, and find out that the reason my phone line went down is that they're doing the switchover to VDSL today. As in two days before they send me the equipment to handle the switchover. I'm late for work by the time I get that answer, so I've got to hoof it over to the office and get to work.

Two calls to OTE Customer Service later (the next attempt transferred me to limbo), I'm told by a technician that no, an ADSL modem-router can't understand a VDSL signal, so what they're going to do is give me ten gigabytes of cell phone data free of charge, so I can tether anything to my phone until the new modem comes. I ask if maybe I can just go to an OTE office or storefront or something and pick up a modem from them, instead of being stuck until delivery, and the tech hems and haws and finally says he can't guarantee anything, because he wouldn't know what any store would have in stock.

Fine. I break early for lunch and head to the OTE storefront/office at Syntagma Square (which, contrary to public perception, is actually quite calm these days; the marble steps in front of the hotels have a year and a half or so of weathering on them, which didn't happen when they were being smashed regularly). I go and ask if I can pick up a new VDSL modem-router from them instead of being stuck in limbo. The answer: they're on different systems, and can't interact between the store and the courier system.

In other words, SOL.

Is it me, or would it have made sense for the phone company to have checked to make sure the equipment was in place before switching over the line?

Bleah.

There's something about the higher-ups' screaming tantrums in this office that really steams me, even beyond the high-stress situations they cause.

Whenever I actually go to challenge someone who's being overly loud and disruptive? They apologize to me. Often as not, they'll tell me I'm right. And then, a few minutes later, they go right back to it as if nothing had happened.

I'm on the verge of asking the most disruptive ones a very pointed question:

"Is this acceptable behavior for civilized people in this society?"

If the answer is yes, then I've got nothing. If the answer's no, well, the obvious next question practically asks itself, doesn't it?

===

ETA:

Didn't go down quite as I'd anticipated. (This conversation took place in Greek.)

Culprit #2 (walking down the hall): How are you doing?
Me: "Eh, so-so."
C2 (cringing): "Stay away from me!"
Me: "It's not a disease, it's the noise. Seriously. It's making me dizzy. I can't think straight."

C2 went to her office. C1 remained in her office. Both have been popping off at various intervals today.

I'll admit it wasn't the most diplomatic way for me to air my grievance. But sometimes, you've just got to say something...

The big news here in Greece recently has involved a borderline-insane radical fringe party that saw an upswing in popularity, overestimated the leeway it gave them to play fast and loose with the accepted norms of society, and are currently in several flavors of deep trouble.

Sounds weird and foreign, doesn't it?

When your sarcasm detectors have stopped beeping, you might be a bit surprised to know that the last big protest in Athens was actually a multilateral show of opposition to the clowns in the Chrysi Avgi (Golden Dawn) party, who have fomented an atmosphere of anti-immigrant, anti-foreigner violence, appropriated a lot of the imagery of the Nazis (who, if you'll pardon a historical detour, actually invaded and occupied this country within the living memory of a lot of people living here, and did a lot of the same sort of stuff that got their higher-ups hanged at Nuremberg - check that, some of the stuff they did here in Greece actually did get 'em hanged at Nuremberg), and ... where was I? Oh yeah, anti-immigrant, anti-foreigner, anti-people-who-don't-like-Golden-Dawn. That last category's there because it includes a popular Greek rapper who got stabbed to death on the streets of Athens by a vocal Golden Dawn supporter, which proved to be a bridge too far for the sane caucus of the Greek Parliament, which these days can't seem to come to substantial agreement on anything.

When I say that the behavior of Congress in Washington is baffling to my co-workers here in Athens, you've got to understand this is coming from people who are intimately familiar with dysfunctional legislative organizations. And like it or not, stuff that goes down in Washington is news in Athens; the shutdown was on the front page of at least one major paper here.

On a more personal note, things have actually quieted down to a great degree. Like I said, the last screaming protest to hit my neighborhood was intended to tell the Golden Dawn crazies to put a sock in it; there are general strikes on tap for November, but I don't know how much impact they're going to have. In the office, there was a shuffling around of desks and such to accommodate new hires (oh yeah, we've got new hires, so things aren't all bad), so I got shunted to one side. To an office of my own.

With a window (albeit on an airshaft, but still).

And a door.

A solid door.

Most of the time, I leave it open, so as not to isolate myself, but there are still times when people get loud enough to cross the obnoxiousness threshold (about 90 dB on the iPod's sound meter), and I can close the door to give myself a bit of noise buffer. It makes life a little more livable.

All's quiet on the home front, too. Had a series of little incidents last month - my washing machine kind of exploded when I threw a bath mat into it to wash, not realizing that whatever non-grip stuff it had on its bottom surface would slough off and completely clog the works. So I had to get a replacement. And it wasn't properly installed - more to the point, there was a piece locking the shock-absorbers of the clothing drum in place, that was supposed to be removed before operation but wasn't, so when I ran it, all the vibrations were transmitted to the full machine, which would kind of dance. Until the time I started a wash cycle and the thing vibrated about half a foot to the right and completely blocked the bathroom door. Which led to the window on the bathroom door being broken out to allow passage in to shove the washing machine back into position.

It's fixed now. The washing machine, that is. The door window still needs replacement.

And somehow it's already almost time to plan my Christmas/New Year's trip to New York to see the family. Have to see how that works out.

PS: as the native English language speaker on staff, sometimes it's a little frustrating when I'm dealing with areas where the rules are fuzzy, or depend on where the speaker comes from or lives. Ah well. It's a living, I suppose.

Just realized I've gone a month without a post. Then again, not too much in the way of excitement here - the protests seem to have died down from years gone by, and the worst of the psychodynamics is closer to home.

Well, the office, anyway.

There are too many people around whose standard mode of communication is "belligerent hollering", and my tolerance for that sort of thing has its limits. I've taken to cranking up the sound on my iPod again to create a noise buffer against the shouting.

Came to the point where I was trying to look up a certain word, and coming up dry, asking one of my office-mates for help ... and one of the senior partners, who I've had to tune out as a matter of course lest I blow a gasket, shouted an answer at me from her office, unbidden.

And I missed it.

So now it's almost like I'm back in the situation I was in while conscripted in the army: 100% concentration on everything everyone says, translation circuit on all the time, no chance to catch a breather. Because this same person has a habit of shouting for subordinates like calling in a dog to be chastised - and will ream out subordinates publicly, even while there's a conference call blaring on speakerphone at the same time, so she's got to scream to be heard over the loud background chatter.

And a week without such an incident is a rarity.

This is common to Greek society, I'm told. It's on the TV, on the radio, on the street, in the Parliament, everywhere.

This is an old society, which has somehow survived a long time.

So why does it feel to me like the entire society's dropped into the septic tank?

Yeah, things got kind of unruly in Athens on Tuesday, with Chancellor Merkel's visit.

(Aside: read at least one comment somewhere-or-other declaring: "Merkel should be grateful that the title of 'Worst Chancellor Ever' is rather securely sewn up.")

On the other hand, 48 hours later, I went by Syntagma Square to grab a bite of lunch, and took a look at the hotels on one side of the square. Normally, that's where the hooligans go to find the rocks that they throw at the cops - in the wake of a riot, they're generally smashed to gravel.

Today, those steps were all intact, all the way up the side of the square.

Got asked for my input on a firmly worded letter a colleague wanted to send to an adversarial party that had demanded something stupid.

Futzed around to come up with some way of getting the point across in English.

Was asked to re-work it. Reason?

It wasn't sarcastic enough.

And people wonder why this country is going to pot.

Been short on posting and such; work's been fairly busy, and family's been over visiting family.

I guess the news has been on the story: the protests started Friday, with running skirmishes between hooligans and cops, then got worse on Saturday, and quite a bit worse on Sunday. Thankfully, my apartment is outside the main protest zone, and anyone attacking my block would have to deal with a bunch of cheesed-off Canadians, anyway, so home was left basically unmolested.

Work was another story. I didn't even get near downtown this past weekend, but coming in on Monday, there were a lot of places where stonework had been smashed off the walls, windows broken - the vandalism was heavily concentrated on the banks, with windows and ATMs smashed (and presumably looted). Monday morning and there's still tear gas residue in the air.

I suspect it may be a little while before there's another major protest; that seems to be the pattern after a protest gets out of hand badly enough to leave major damage.

Haven't seen Syntagma Square yet today; I imagine it's going to be a complete shambles.

Tomorrow is Polytechnio Day in Greece. It's not an official bank holiday, but it marks the student protest against the military junta of the late Sixties and early Seventies. Given that the date commemorates a protest, it's likely to be marked by protests.

And given the nature of protests these days in Greece, being in an office building two blocks from Parliament is not a very good place to be.

The Senior Partners have, therefore, called tomorrow a "work-from-home" day, realizing that if the protests do go wahoonie-shaped, a bunch of people in business attire could find themselves in a ... dicey ... situation.

So I'll be cranking away at tasks from the home computer tomorrow, it appears. Theoretically safe and sound, most of a mile away from the protest zone.

Except ... the Polytechnio Day protests traditionally end with a march from Parliament to the American Embassy (the US supported the junta; not America's finest hour by any means). The Embassy is only about two blocks from my apartment.

I'll go out on a limb and assume that any protests will be less violent than the incident a few years back when someone decided that the proper method of protest against the United States involved a rocket-propelled grenade. But I still plan to be cautious tomorrow.

So after I-lost-track-of-how-many months of negotiation and brinksmanship, the European Community figured out some sort of debt relief plan for Greece. Short-term pain, hopefully somewhat longer-term stability. The population is desperately unhappy, but let's face it: the country is in a place where there aren't any good painless policy choices at the moment.

So I imagine that my reaction on hearing the news was probably replicated all over the place.

The news: The Prime Minister is going to put the debt-relief agreement up to a referendum vote by the Greek populace.

The reaction, probably punctuated by desks being hit by heads representing about thirty-two-point-eight zillion dollars of at-risk, heh, "investments", was a groan that in any language translates to "oh, crap."

The governing party - PASOK, the Socialists - hopes that the people will, heh, choose wisely. The primary opposition party - Nea Dimokratia, New Democracy, the Conservatives - say that there needs to be a snap election, not to decide on the policy, but to change the government. One of the splinter radical parties, SYRIZA, says there's no point to elections. (Can't quite suss out their logic; something like "meet the new boss, same as the old boss", maybe? Because both major parties bear an enormous amount of responsibility, so to speak, for painting the country into this corner.)

And the Communists, who command the more radical trade unions, want to hold rallies and basically discredit the entire system of governance.

I remember a discussion with my mother and my aunt over the sort of things that happened the last time the Communists tried to do things their way in parts of the country. To give you an idea of how bad it was, when they talk about the Greek Civil War, that's the period they're talking about.

Basically, the Communists demanded fealty and support from everyone in areas they controlled, the older generation said - and they'd lived through it, remember.

Me: "[You support us or you'll get your throat cut, right?]"
My aunt: "[No, they'd gouge out people's eyes.]"

In short, who to trust? I got no clue. None of the parties have given any reason for confidence. The firebomb-throwing anarchists think things will be just peachy if they're allowed to burn down everything that represents the current system - conveniently neglecting that fire spreads, and there's empirical evidence that their fires kill.

Oh, yeah.

This is gonna suck.

Once upon a time, I thought the attitude might have been imprinted on people in the army: the only-look-out-for-yourself, do-the-minimum-to-get-by, leave-the-mess-for-the-next-guy attitude. I certainly saw it enough during my conscription term.

Not that the idea had been created in the army, mind you, but that it was a natural place for that corrosive attitude to be passed on to the next generation, since every male in the country had to go through basic training.

I mentioned this theory to a female colleague, once I was out of the army and back at work.

"It doesn't explain why women have the same attitude," she said.

She had a point.

Oddly enough, women are heavily represented in the legal profession here in Greece; I'm in a fairly large office, and the women outnumber the men here by something like two to one.

The kitchen sink's still overflowing with dirty dishes after lunch, to the point where it's almost a gymnastic trick to clean a fork.

(I can't think of an intermediate example at the moment to fulfil the Rule of Three.)

And all too often, conversations will take place over speakerphones. That in itself isn't the problem; the problem is that the speakerphones will be turned up very loud, the people will be shouting, and the doors to the offices will be wide open.

It's annoying and distracting, and pervasive, all the way up to the senior-partner level. Maybe it's just me, stranger in a strange homeland, still not adjusted to The Way Things Are Done Here. But sometimes the only way I can concentrate is to shove the earbuds deep into my ears and crank up some music.

And it sometimes feels like the same attitude that manifests in the marches in the streets, or even in traffic patterns sometimes. Every man for himself. Unless, of course, you're in a chosen group. If you're not one of US, then you can go suck vacuum.

Something like that.

I notice I've been out of touch here for something like three weeks. Sorry for the inanity.