Josh is trying to set up satellite TV here at the house because he needs to be able to watch Arabic news and other shows as part of becoming fluent, keeping up with current events here in the Middle East, and so they can watch soccer, of course.
So Josh calls the satellite company that everyone uses and they say, “we’re switching over our system right now and aren’t taking new customers.” He asks, “so when will you be taking new customers?” She replies, “hmm, maybe one month. Maybe two. Call back one month.” (I have the sudden urge to say, “No soup for you! come back one year!)
Instead Josh is going to get TV “the Egyptian way” and he is currently out with our boab (the guy who maintains the property, washes the cars, sweeps the street, carries groceries up for us, etc.) to buy a satellite dish and decoder box so he can get the free Arabic channels. We won’t have American channels, but I’ll catch up with re-runs when we get back. Besides, watching TV is almost painful without my DVR.
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Josh was successful with the TV hunt. He went out and bought a dish/receiver and had someone come and install it all for about $80 (American). Now we have 525 channels of Arabic speaking goodness. And as a bonus we have about 5 English language channels. One that seems to play all the Terminator movies on a continual loop and another plays The Simpsons, Alias, and The OC pretty often. Maybe I’ll have to start watching those. When I turned on the TV, Caleb asked if I was going to watch Judge Judy. Ah, he knows me well. Unfortunately, Judy will have to wait until next year.
On the internet hunt he is still coming up empty. He got a call last night saying he had to get our phone number released from the previous company. After calling them they said, “wait an hour and we’ll call back with the cancellation confirmation.” Um, that didn’t happen. So he called again this morning and they said, “wait one hour and we’ll call you back with the cancellation number.” Hilarious.
Update: He waited a few hours and called back: “We’re having technical difficulties. Call back one hour.” Several hours later he keeps calling back and all he’s getting is a busy signal. Maybe they disconnected their number and fled town . . .