Mobile broadband woes

Finding a short term wireless solution in this city seems to be as insurmountable as finding an end to end solution in Angola, DRC, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. Welcome to London, the world’s leading financial centre, and all things backward. Given that HSBC still sends me a letter confirming an appointment, and all telecom seems to be handed out 12-18 month contracts, I ought to be less frustrated at my lack of success in acquiring a monthly/pay as you go option for mobile broadband. O2 was a revelation – a successful order, a failed dispatch, a direct debit set up, no order to be found in the system, a directory that’s out of date without the possibility of manual intervention, a letter confirming account details, and no dongle! T-Mobile seems to be a lot easier even if I have to pay for the damn dongle. But now that I have the device in my possession, it is proving notoriously uncooperative in my attempts to get online, register and well, get on with it. Theft is no longer an option given the signal from the only unsecured wireless has all but disappeared, so I am faced with the option of trekking to the store tomorrow in a last ditch endeavour to sort this out, failing which, I shall write copious amounts through the night and inflict it on the blog, watch lots of DS9, Riptide (what can I say – moment of extreme weakness) and shabby Hindi films, and eat (that reminds me, I don’t think I cleared up tonight’s culinary triumph – think I may have forgotten what it is like to live alone!) till the sandman vanquishes me....