A Rough Day

A-Plus: 3 Weeks

Setting up my new apartment is proceeding, but I have hit a snag with internet service. From what I learned from American Moshe, in Israel you have to sign up with two companies to receive internet service. The first is Bezek, Israel's phone monopoly, which installs the hard connection for you. They charge 300 shekels for the favor of installing the line before charging a monthly fee of 80 shekels. Then, there's the internet service provider. This has been opened to competition, so there are about five major providers, one of which is also Bezek. You have to sign up with one of them and pay them a monthly fee as well. That way, Bezek picks your right pocket and the internet service provider picks your left pocket, so nobody steps on anybody else's toes.

I've been getting quite tired of having my hand held, between Nefesh B'Nefesh, my cousins, and friends throughout the country insisting on helping me with everything. I decided that this was something I could do on my own for once! So I called Bezek and signed up for an account. Roi, my operator, asked me, "Do you want me to get somebody who speaks English or do you think we can do this in Hebrew Ephraim? Ephraim... wow, that's a special name." I figured I can speak decent Hebrew, so we went through the entire procedure and I signed up for the internet. Problem solved, right?

Well, today I called to order my modem and it was as if nobody had ever heard of me. Rafi happened to be driving down to the Bezek store to pick up a new modem and gave me a ride. When I got there, their computers were on the fritz so they couldn't find my file. I was getting so frustrated that I decided to leave it for the next day and stormed out. Fortunately, the Bezek store happened to be right next to the central bus station where they sell telecards, so I bought one and could at least say that I accomplished something.