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The UN is useful!
For those of you who think the UN serves no useful purpose, take heed of the following:
At 0930 this morning my two phone lines went dead (incl ADSL, of course). I phoned the faults dept. of CYTA, the government telecomms provider. The girl tested the line and said there was a fault, which I knew already. About an hor later, a yellow CYTA van appeared with three blokes. They reconfirmed our phones weren't working and one of them shinned up the pole the other side of the street did some testing and confirmed that the fault was before that. The foreman phoned through on his mobile and then told me he was not authorised to go beyond the local connections, as it was underground beyond that. He told me an emergency team would arrive tomorrow or the day after. I pleaded with him and he said that tomorrow was the earliest and went away.
About 20 minutes later, another yellow van appeared, to my surprise. Chatting with the boss, I learnt that they were an ultra-priority team on standby for repairs to diplomatic missions, government departments and suchlike. It transpired that CYTA have me on file as working for the UN (which I was), so I was back in business after another hour or so of tracing the fault down to a pig's breakfast of an underground junction box 150 m down the road.
2½ hours of fault instead of at least 10 times that, had I not been an ex-UN consultant!
At 0930 this morning my two phone lines went dead (incl ADSL, of course). I phoned the faults dept. of CYTA, the government telecomms provider. The girl tested the line and said there was a fault, which I knew already. About an hor later, a yellow CYTA van appeared with three blokes. They reconfirmed our phones weren't working and one of them shinned up the pole the other side of the street did some testing and confirmed that the fault was before that. The foreman phoned through on his mobile and then told me he was not authorised to go beyond the local connections, as it was underground beyond that. He told me an emergency team would arrive tomorrow or the day after. I pleaded with him and he said that tomorrow was the earliest and went away.
About 20 minutes later, another yellow van appeared, to my surprise. Chatting with the boss, I learnt that they were an ultra-priority team on standby for repairs to diplomatic missions, government departments and suchlike. It transpired that CYTA have me on file as working for the UN (which I was), so I was back in business after another hour or so of tracing the fault down to a pig's breakfast of an underground junction box 150 m down the road.
2½ hours of fault instead of at least 10 times that, had I not been an ex-UN consultant!
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