There is no doubt that after all these years living in the islands, I have become far more accustomed to the ebb and flow of life in the middle of the sea. I certainly don’t think I am quite as expectant or demanding of certain things as I was many years ago. (See last week’s post’s comment about calling NFL Gamepass for an indication.) Although I also imagine you might hear differently if you asked my husband where my tolerance level falls on the scale of NYC to a Tibetan mountain top. Nevertheless, wherever I fall on that emotional spectrum now I know it is not exactly where it used to be. Even baby steps can get you across a room. Even so, every now and again I am still caught off guard and scratching my head over something that strikes me as odd.
Sometimes it’s some spoken logic that I just can’t follow. For instance, I went into the phone company the other day to inquire, face to face, about an ongoing fault on my phone/dsl line. I am sure it has been at least two months that I have been complaining about crackling on the phone line and jittery broadband that is affecting my voip phone call quality and NFL football game streaming. The problem persists. I have called. I have waited for resolution. I have called again. Repeat. So I went down to the office to ask the customer service representative how one went about requesting some consideration on one’s bill for inadequate service and inconvenience. Surprisingly, I just have never actually gone so far as to make such a request before because I am sure I would have remembered the answer she gave me.
Apparently, I have to wait until the problem is fixed. At that time, they will calculate back to the first time that I filed a fault/complaint and then credit me back whatever they determine is an appropriate amount for that period of time. So, let me get this straight. If I understand this correctly, so long as they continue to provide me with substandard service, I pay the full amount. Then when, and only if, they restore my proper service, I can request a retroactive refund which means, I think, that there is really no incentive for them to help me. (If anyone interprets that differently, please let me know.)
Meanwhile, sometimes I get confused over the written word. Take for instance this admirable public service billboard:
It’s a wonderful thing to encourage literacy in a population. I’m all for that. Kudos. But who is the target audience for this campaign? Shouldn’t the message be encouraging someone who can actually read the sign to help someone else become literate today?
But most recently I was thrown off (or maybe thrown up from the driver’s seat of my car) over this sign:
Again I applaud the fact that someone bothered to actually post a sign warning of a pedestrian crossing (since I don’t know that I’ve ever seen such a sign on island before); but this may be because this particular pedestrian crossing is conveniently perched on top of a speed bump (hump). I also apologize for the fact that the road itself doesn’t photograph well. See the white triangle/arrow heads pointing up to the crosswalk hash marks cutting across the road? That’s the promised Humped Crossing.
Now granted, the United States never did go metric. And granted I am a woman so sizes/lengths can be hard for me to judge (see how I turned that one around?). However, I was lucky enough to get the truck in the photo for some perspective, and you may just have to take my word for it but the distance between the sign post and the danger is NOT 100m unless m is not short for meter, or maybe Georgia is short for Gulliver and this is not the island of Anguilla after all.
