When in Florence

My computer is broken. I feel completely lost without it. I have grown to depend on my (once) trusty MAC PowerBookG4.  It is so easy to use, it became second nature to me, I have the thing decked out with photoshop and illustrator for all of my photo editing and graphic design needs and now all of a sudden I have none of that. I am sharing a computer with my husband.  A rather nice PC, but certainly not my MAC.  I have a camera full of photos from Sunday's protest, but I have no idea what to do with them. I had an entire word document full of blog topics to post that are sitting on my dead little computer down at the computer shop.  It's been there for 10 days now.  Yes and they haven't even looked at it yet.  I was so hopeful when I took it in thinking that the Canadian kid that was working there really understood customer service the way I do. He was patient and kind and really wanted to help.  He said it would take about a week to a week and a half for them to look and it and tell me what's wrong and then they would call me and let me know how much it would cost to repair and if ok'd the process they would send it to the Apple store in Milan and the whole process would take about a month.

So thinking that I had a new friend in the Apple world I decided that I would stop in to see if there was any progress and my new friend insisted that he told me a week and a half to two weeks.  I'm sure he didn't but I didn't push the issue as he seemed a little stressed out. He assured me that they would call me the second they opened it up and saw what the problem is. So for right now, I have absolutely no idea when and if I will get my computer back. Of course this is Italian customer service for ya. (I really don't think my Canadian friend has any control over it, he just works there. Either that or you really can take to Canadian out of the boy)   Well, maybe, but we're not really sure, um, why don't you check back in a couple of weeks.  This is where patience truly becomes a virtue.  This is just one example of the little cultural difference that we as expats deal with regularly.  It can become rather frustrating at times especially since we are perfectly aware that it does not need to take this long to resolve a problem. We know that closing your store for 2-3hrs in the afternoon is not necessarily the most logical or effective business practice and that most others countries in the world would fire their employees for making their customers feel as if they were burdening them for asking for help. That is when you begin to practice your Yoga breathing and try to avoid confrontation. I really don't want to argue with you about the fact that I was told something different the first time I was here. I just want my computer back, or to know weather it can be fixed or not.  Am I asking too much?

So word to the wise, if you are planning a visit to Italy, be prepared, customer service is not what you are used to. Obviously no one really cares if you ever come back or not. And just because the told you something was going to get done, doesn't mean that they are in any hurry to do it.

So, I sincerely apologize for my boring posts and lack of accompanying photos. I just seem to lack creativity without my own computer and I don't really know how to use this one so well.

Maybe I'll have an answer on my computer by next week.  Maybe.