I spent very nearly two hours last Saturday in the offices of China Unicom attempting to arrange the reconnection of the telephone and Internet services to my apartment.
And after all that protracted wrangling, the unhappy outcome was: phone, yes, Internet, no.
Turns out Unicom’s Internet wing, China Netcom, can’t give me an account at this address because the previous tenant had omitted to cancel his account there.
You’d think the landlord would be able to cancel an account registered at his property. But no. Because my predecessor had his Chinese wife pose as the landlord to authorise his setting up of the account, the real landlord is now unable to cancel it.
I have to wait until it expires of natural causes, through repeated non-payment – “two to three months” (assuming he didn’t pay a year or half-year in advance!).
2 comments:
What you should do is lie that the previous tenant's wife is actually your wife (and landlord), then go find someone who can fake the papers for you. Then bribe the Internet company to give you another line which you then don't pay for but sell to the neighbours. After that, cut the original line and tape it (with selotape that will fall off within the month) to the new line so you get the Internet and your neighbours get the old line. Then lie to your neighbours that you have no idea what's going on and blame it on the phone company. Once you've done that pretend to sell your apartment and lie that you still live in your old house thereby regaining your old Internet account (for free) on your brand new working line. Then just bribe this guy and fake that stuff and lie about the other thing and you're all set! Not only did you save just about every little bit of face you could ever want but you got stuff happening and annoyed just about everyone else in the process; well you've got to get one up on them right and you're fully integrating yourself as a proper (silly) member of society!
Inspired, John.
You're not Chinese, are you?
Or Georgian, maybe??
Post a Comment