Archive for October, 2006

It is more than half past three in the middle of the night, early Tuesday. My god damn neighbors have been playing loud techno music and shit like that the whole night, and they are screaming and thrashing things in the basement of this 10 floors big house. I went down to the basement and tried to find out who is responsible for the party but nobody was able to tell me.

I asked them to turn the volume down, but then they just asked me if I am Swedish. Yes, I am one of the few Swedes in this house, if that matters, but when I said yes, they just laughed at me. So I found the source of music, which consisted of one big fat receiver and a laptop. I tried to turn the software volume down, but as the fucking laptop was running a Spanish version of Windows, I was not able to find out how to do. Instead, I turned off the computer and the receiver for them and went back upstairs to my apartment.

What can I do about these neighbors? This is not the first time they have parties in the middle of the week and it is unlikely to be the last… And my landlord does not offer any disturbance hotline.

At the moment of writing this, they have succeeded in starting up the music again. Now, I will go and see if I can remove the fuses or turn off the main power source.

Time to update my homepage, indeed. Let’s do it with some statement. Students must not call abroad, if they use a cellphone subscription of the Swedish telephone company Telia. That’s a fact I faced today, when I was about to make a call to Italy (of which reason I will come to in a future post). I picked up my phone, dialed the number and waited for an Italian to answer me. Instead, I heard a recorded voice telling me that I cannot call this number from this subscription, plus a referring phone number to Telia for details. So I called Telia. They informed me that my salary is beneath the limit for making abroad calls. I need to earn SEK above or equal to 10000 a month.

I was stunned. Could this really be true? And how can they know my salary? How can they be allowed to know my salary in the first place? Well, that’s another point. When I was revealed from my chock, I said that I am a student with about SEK 7000 a month in student subsidies. That’s not enough, because 7000 is less than 10000. Yes, I can agree on that one.

So, keeping to the topic, which is not very far-fetched, a normal student will not be able to call abroad from a Telia cellphone subscription. I don’t know about the policy of other phone companies, but as I have a minimum subscription time of 12 months counted from this summer, I would not be helped by the fact that there may be other options.

Of course, I solved the issue by using VoIP, but that is not the point. I just want to spread this word as a warning to students that are potential cellphone subscribers - do not give your soul to Telia!