Lost in The Holyland Chaos
July 12th, 2006
One of the first days I was here at the Hebrew U. I came across a rather nice fella who lived directly above me. This is not what made him nice however, but more-so the fact that he had purchased internet access and was now allowing the whole of our dorm to use it. One day, he pulled me aside and stated that he was going to be moving back to the US and wanted to know if I wanted to pick-up his internet account. “I most certainly do!”, I exclaimed. So we began to make the arrangements for me to take over his account.
He (Bryson) and I walked down to the place where these magic events (like transferring of internet accounts) happen. This place also had, what I thought at the time to be a magical name… “Bezek”. Much to my chagrin, magic was just the thing that allowed anything to be accomplished with in this tele-com company. As my new friend and I arrived at the Bezek office (it was more like the backroom of some less then fresh market and was located in what seemed to be a rundown strip-mall), I thought to myself how many times I had heard of how things can get complicated in Israel and that maybe this might be my chance to experience it first hand. I was surprised however to find the transfer of account to my name to be incredibly smooth. Not only to my surprise but to that of Bryson’s as well, yet in his great experience while living in the country he asked for a copy of the paper work (I could hear echoes of my father’s voice in his actions).
While the attendant was away making copies, Bryson commented on how amazingly smooth everything went, quite the opposite was his first experience with Bezek. As he began to tell me of his ordeal with the nation-wide tele-com company he used a word that all Israelis are far too familiar with. It is one word that sums up the whole of life here in Israel; the untimeliness of most officials, poor directions/instructions on just about everything, the fear of suicide bombings and other militant actions, general disregard for traffic laws, the constant tension between the world’s 3 major religions, etc. This word is life in Israel. Belegen. Belegen basically refers to the vain of chaos runs through every aspect of life in Israel. Can’t get to work because of a traffic block: Belegen. All power in the dorms have been turned off today: Belegen. Your locked in the old city for 3 hours due to a possible threat: Belegen. Bryson told me that this would be a very useful word for me in the future.
Well, come to find out that future for me was only 2 days away when Bezek came to install my phone line. They were supposed to arrive sometime between 2 and 5 that day and never showed up. So about 30 minutes to 5:00 I call Bezek to ask if they are going to send someone out today or not. With great effort I button-mashed my way past their automated service that was only in Hebrew or Russian and was able to speak with someone who could both communicate with me and answer my questions. Come to find out, the technician had already been to my locations, but never came up to my room. They said, “all I need to do is plug a phone in to the jack in the wall to check and see if I had a dial tone”, then they would turn my DSL access on. The problem with this is, I don’t have a phone to plug into the wall, as a matter of fact, no one in my whole building (20 floors of 3 suits with 2 people to a suite) had one. So, Bezek says to me that they will do nothing until I can verify that I have a tone… so I run down to the door office which is surprisingly open where a young woman about my age is sitting watching women??????s tennis on TV. I ask if I can borrow one of the three phones that have been strewn about in the office for 2 minutes so I can verify that I have tone. Now I needed to get all of this done before 5, so that if there is a problem the technician can come back and fix it. Well, the young woman at the desk says to me, “No, you can not use any of these phones because I need them to work”, as she continues to watch her program. So I ask her, “what happens if you need to leave your office, how does your work get a hold of you”, she said by cell phone as she shows it to me. Time is ticking away towards 5 and I am debating with this woman to see if I can borrow their phone to plug in to my wall jack just a few floors above her. After I convinced her that when I have the office phone it would be just as if she had stepped out of the office for a couple of minutes, I ran with it up to the 14th floor where my room is and plugged it into the wall where I found out that, YES…. there was NO tone. The time at that point was well after five and so the technician had already gone home for the day.
This was a Friday and nothing happens on the Shabbat in Jerusalem so it was not until Tuesday of the next week that the tech could come back out. So I call Monday to verify that the tech is coming to my place the next day, where I get caught up in a debate with the woman from Bezek on the other end of the line about whether or not I can access the account. The account had been transferred into my name and my credit card but since I was not the person who opened the account (Bryson) she could not speak with me about it. After about 45 minutes of this I verified my identity and that a tech was indeed coming out to my location the fallowing day.
When the Tech arrived he spent about an hour tracking down the reason as to why I had no signal in my room. At the end of it (running up to my room, down to the basement, up to the rooms above me and back again), apparently the cord in my wall had been ripped in two and it had been not 5 feet from the jack. With a quick patch job, he tested my phone line and what would you know, it worked perfectly. He then tested the DSL modem, but it did not work. He said to me that it will not work now but it will in a couple of hours… so he left and I was content to wait a couple hours more. That night, the DSL modem worked… well mostly. It was communicating over my phone line but was not allowing me to access the internet. I then got on the phone with Bezek only to find out that I needed to deal with another company, the one that provided the DSL service which also had the name Bezek… but Bezek International. SO I called them and was with them for an hour on the phone before we conference called the other Bezek company. So I was on the phone with 2 Bezeks and still without solutions. At the end of the conversation, they had decided to send out another technician the next day but if the problem fixes itself to call them so they can cancel the Tech. SO I called them the next day after class to verify that I had a Tech coming to see me, which I once again got another run around… as I was waiting I tried again to get back on the internet… and wouldn’t you know it the problem had fixed its self! So I canceled the Tech and a week and a half later I had internet and was now thoroughly acquainted with the Belegen that is life in Israel!
July 12th, 2006 at 4:27 pm
Sounds just like my experience with Comcast last week…..BELEGEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
July 14th, 2006 at 12:13 am
Whatever happened to “Lachim!” Like from fiddler on the roof. Which means to life! Similar?