The MEO saga - part III (of III!)
It's finally over! So what did we learn?
If you’re just joining us, you might find it helpful to start at the beginning. Which is here. Or, if you want to be contrary, you can start in the middle. Which is here.
On to the end!
It happened! Finally! At long, long last!
We were dining at an exceedingly happening brunch spot on July 7 when, YES!, Amy got a response from MEO to her entry on the Complaints Book.
Sadly, the lady on the phone was uncertain about her English and about what she could convey. She was able to say: it normally takes 2, maybe 3, months for a new building like ours to get hooked up for fiber, because, um, the City? Has to review things maybe?1
Regardless, it didn’t exactly move the ball forward and, as usual for conversations on this topic, raised more questions than it answered.
We’re sure our frustration with this ongoing situation has come through in each of our previous posts about the four months it took to get us connected to internet/phone/tv service at our new apartment. The frustration came from two areas. More on that in a moment.
First, though, we have good news to report
We’re up and running!
The actual conclusion of it all was quick and, at times, heart-stopping. Mere hours after our publishing our last post on this topic, (which we ended with the words
And that’s where we are at present. There’s no question progress has been made; the before and after photos of the utility cabinet are proof of that. As usual, though, we remain in the dark about what still needs to happen and what kind of time frame we’re talking about.)
Scott’s phone rang.
Caller ID said 16200. That’s MEO’s main number!2 The very nice woman3 on the line claimed to speak “a little English” and then proceeded to be quite proficient in the language.4 She said they were in “the final step” of the process and she expected that step to be completed either the following day (Friday, July 28) or Monday. After that step was done, someone would call us to schedule an appointment to connect us.
Sure enough, the phone rang again on Monday, July 31 at 17h18 and - boom! - we had an appointment scheduled for the following day.
Two technicians arrived at 13:25 and were here for more than two hours during which time there was a lot of
*distant murmur in Portuguese* from man downstairs,
não from the man in our apartment who was frantically plugging and unplugging wires into a box that seemed to never say what he wanted it to.5
One spoke what seemed to be excellent French (our downstairs neighbor waylaid them because she needed service as well6), the other spoke enough English to enable some halting conversation in English/Caveman Portuguese. Eventually, it was determined (and later communicated) that the cable from our apartment to the utility box was broken. A new cable was run.
The guys came and went from our apartment, were in and out of the building, and took a (short) break or two, but ultimately, they got it done. They deserve a lot of credit for their troubleshooting and their perseverance.
So now that we’re luxuriating in the unprecedented burst of speed and connectivity - and before we start staring slack-jawed at our television for the next several weeks - let’s take a moment to try and draw some conclusions from this experience.
As we mentioned above, there were two main sources of frustration as this unfolded over the last four months.
We didn’t have the internet service we were expecting
Since our tv is internet-based, that meant basically no tv. Given that we’d cut ties with our cable company in the US about 20 years ago, this wasn’t a huge problem for us. Yes, we’d watched more tv in Lisbon than we had in St. Louis, but there are plenty of better other ways for us to occupy our time. We’re glad to have tv as an option again, but we did fine without it.7 Scott was able to livestream on his laptop both the Eurovision Song Competition and the Women’s World Cup matches he most wanted to see so while none of that happened in the more comfortable space on the larger screen, at least it happened.8
Of greater concern was the lack of a reliable internet connection. Generally, we made do with using our cellphones as hotspots. In practice, there were times when we were, say, in the bedroom and unable to get a signal. Or we’d want to print something and have to jump through hoops to do so.9
Like many other things in life, it wasn’t an issue until it became an issue. 80% of the time, we operated totally normally. 20% of the time it was a massive inconvenience.
The bigger frustration, though, was
We had no idea what was going on
And here is where issues of language and culture get entangled in ways that can be tricky to separate.
We’re foreigners in Portugal. Still relatively new to the country, definitely new to the language. At best, we have an elementary school grasp of grammar and vocabulary. The conversations we’d have liked to have had about our internet service would probably have needed to get quite technical.
In the United States, it may have ended up sounding a bit like this:
Well, you see, the thungumerator needs to connect to the whizamong, right? And that connection happens through the grenchify cables, which are in short supply right now because, you know, China. And Ukraine. Plus, the thungumerator needs to be specially constructed in a jufrrumiter, which is a multi-step process that has limited capacity. So we’re in phase two there. Even under ideal conditions, the timeframe on that is elastic. But now we don’t have enough workers because the government can’t do its job. Illegal immigrants are pouring over our borders and threatening our way of life but we can’t hire enough people due to inflation and why can’t the government just stay out of our business?
Now take that entire explanation above, copy and paste it into DeepL, the online translator, set to Portuguese. Take what comes out on the Portuguese side and run it through Google Translate set to English and see what it looks like. It’s close, but not the same. A bit like a game of Telephone if you’ve ever played it.
That’s what talking to someone in their non-native language about this is like.10 The words mostly make sense but the whole is somehow less than the sum of its parts.
A ten-minute conversation can be distilled into two sentences that basically come down to: Stuff needs to happen. We don’t know how long it’ll take.
And that’s hard for those of us who really want to understand what’s going on.
Before we go any further, we want to be absolutely, completely crystal clear: nobody in Portugal owes us anything.
We are beyond fortunate and extremely grateful that there are enough people here who speak enough English to get us even that much information.11 Many of the companies we communicate most frequently with have customer service representatives who speak excellent English. Most have English phone prompts. The exceptions are rare enough to be noticeable (and anxiety inducing, but that’s our problem).
As we frantically scramble to bring our knowledge of the language we chose to immerse ourselves in up to the level of an 8-year-old, how reasonable is it for us to expect those around us to be able to have a technical conversation clearly in their second (or third …) language?
Despite all the obvious linguistic hurdles, though, it feels a bit like it’s not just the language at work.
There’s a tendency for people here to repeat themselves. To say the same thing multiple times in slightly different ways. To re-phrase a sentence or concept that was already clear and doesn’t need to be spoken again.
We know it’s not just us this happens to; others have written about this as well.
The effect is that when you ask a clarifying question you often get the same idea you were just presented with, in different words. Scott has lost track of the number of times he’s had to restrain himself from saying, “I actually do understand what you just said. I’m asking a different question.” Because it’s wrong to be rude to someone who’s being so very nice.12
So what’s going on here? Is there a collective worry that the right words aren’t being spoken well enough, that the ideas aren’t landing? Or is it something else?
We’ve heard many times that interactions in Portugal are relationship-based rather than transactional. That’s a beautiful thing. It means human connections actually matter. And that zipping from one to-do list item to the other isn’t the driving force for most people on most days. It’s refreshing. Could that idea also be contributing in some way to the communication frustrations we’ve been experiencing?
If the culture revolves around relationships, maybe taking the time to go with the flow of the conversation rather than trying to steer it is a good idea - imagine a raft rather than a boat. That may mean hearing the same ideas presented multiple times - spending a few minutes in a conversational eddy, if you will. Rivers don’t always flow in a straight line; sometimes a floating object moves sideways, or even backwards. But rivers do flow in a particular direction and if you stay on one long enough, you’ll eventually reach the end.
Perhaps learning to take a few minutes to honor the explanation we’ve been given and to look for a different - maybe less direct? - way to phrase a question that might result in a shift from sideways to forward momentum would be helpful.
Or perhaps it won’t.
Hard to say. But there’s one way to find out.
As usual, as soon as we learn anything, we’ll let you know.
That’s all for now.
Love from Lisbon,
Scott & Amy
When all else fails, blame someone else, amiright?
Yes. We have MEO’s numbers memorized.
Virtually everyone we have spoken with over the four months we’ve been working through this has been very nice.
This, in our experience, is common here.
This, while not as bad as calling someone, is not a good sign.
This is an entirely separate saga in its own right. Very short version is that she moved in a month before us and, for some reason, could not be connected at the same time we were. She is hopeful that tomorrow she will be able to make an appointment to get connected. Tomorrow is a week from when we first got service and we are still the only apartment in the building with wi-fi. Our upstairs neighbors were told by someone at a Vodafone store to lodge a complaint in the Complaints Book. It’s nuts.
And we’ve watched exactly two shows since it has been an option.
In one room it happened, unless the satellites aligned perfectly. Which generally was a couple of hours in the morning.
Scott’s Colossally Large Printer has been ruthlessly mocked at a previous party. Amy is therefore insistent it hide away, and so it is tucked in a nook of the bedroom where no one can see it. Including, especially, her. This means the laptop has to be unplugged and walked down to it where you can perch awkwardly on the bed to Actually Plug Into The Printer. Such horrors.
Sort of.
And they’re all so darn nice about it.
Have we mentioned that everyone is unbelievably nice?
Hooray! I am very happy you finally have this resolved.
Yay! Now everyone else in the building will have to make appointments too. The count down for the whole building continues. 😁