abode acrobat . net

I arrived in Hong Kong, settled into a cheap hotel, then went out to meet a friend, Oliver, who is working for Deloitte on secondment out here. We met up for what he billed as an “orientation briefing”, but which, to an onlooker, would have been described as a veritable piss-up. Either way, it was good to have someone to show me around.

Now it is an unfortunate and recurring theme on these pages that finding a good internet connection is no easy task, especially if you’re unwilling to pay for it, and no doubt I raved to Oliver about how my small and cheap hotel supposedly provided a wireless service. So,imagine my disappointment when I discovered that indeed I could detect their network, but - and I’ll avoid the technical details - it was in the unfortunate state where I couldn’t get on to the internet; most probably restarting the hotel’s modem would have fixed the problem. I reported the situation to the owner and asked if he could restart it for me - you know, switch it off then on again. He replied with some kind of unintelligible joke but I was hopeful that he’d get round to it at some point. A couple of requests later and it became apparent that he was unwilling to help. He said the modem was locked in his office, and he gave some - again unintelligible - reason why he was seriously unable to restart it for me. Short of breaking into his office, or hoping for a power outage, it looked like I wasn’t going to get the thing working, then.

When I was in Phuket with my cousin last week, we had some reason to recall a story from a family holiday in Spain where my grandparents had a house. Up until a certain point, we were known to frequent a seafood restaurant, a little further south along the Costa Blanca. On the occasion in question, let’s say I was ten years old, and unable to judge these things in advance at that age, I needed to use the lavatory during the starter course. Struggling to locate the light switch, I saw a large lever on the wall outside, but thought that such a big fixture couldn’t possibly be the toilet light switch. Eventually, I found the correct switch on the inside and went in. Beginning my return to the table, I suddenly wondered what the larger switch would have done, so duly went back to it and pulled it downwards. The whole restaurant was plunged into darkness, the ovens turned off, and general chaos broke out amongst staff members. Oh, how we laughed at how I ruined all the food! Oh, how we never went back there…

Anyway, it has occurred to me (and, no doubt, to the astute reader also) that a similar accident here might resolve my internet problem; at the moment I am paying extortionate rates for the privilege of typing these words. I have located a candidate for a switch that could possibly control the power for the entire building - the entire fifteen story building, no less. It is in a corridor guarded by CCTV, but I think I can overcome that and other operational hazards. All I need to know from any electrically-enlightened readers is the following:

• If refrigerators turn off will it ruin the food?
• Will it set off the fire alarms interminably?
• If power is cut to the lifts, will they plunge in darkness to the ground?
• Will people die?
• And most importantly, will it fix my internet?