The Thing No-one Talks About....

...is paying your phone bill.
As we bought our sim cards and mobile phones from school; the pay-as-you-go amount is deducted each month from our salary. Sorted. But there was no guidance given at all about how to pay our landline.
Our landline is only a "local" line, which means we can't call internationally (we have Skype, so that's OK), we can't call mobiles (we have mobiles, so that's OK), and we can't call outside Cairo (not that we call outside Cairo much, either). Because of this we hardly ever used it, BUT our landline is really our lifeline, as without it we have no internet. So we know we need to keep it working, but just didn't know how!
We were tipped off that the Telecom Egypt office was the other side of their satellite field (aka our back garden), so I set off there this morning at 9am.
When I got into the building there were two doors; one to the left, and one to the right....which one to choose, Alice? I plumped for the one on the left, as there were more people there. Most people had slips of paper with a number on, but all the desks said different things; accounts, opening accounts, customer services etc. I stood around for a while looking a little bemused and then asked someone who looked official. He didn't understand what I was asking so took me straight to the front to ask someone behind the Customer Service Desk. It turned out that I had chosen the wrong room and should have turned right.
So I go into the room on the right and there is someone official with a long stream of numbers on his desk. He gives me one; number 84. A few people are sitting down, and some are standing near the desks (which say Bill Payment above them....I really was in the wrong room before!). I decide to stand and look over a man's shoulder to see his number. It is 72. I decide to sit down as this could take a while.
I grab a seat and get my book out (No One Sleeps in Alexandria by Ibrahim Abdel Meguid). I also sneak a look at the number of the person sitting two seats away. It is 82. Good. That will give me a better idea of when my turn is. To play it safe, I also put my number on my knee, so that people around me can see it. Only knowing how to say a few numbers in arabic you wouldn't be surprised to know that "84" isn't one of them.
After about 15 minutes I don't recognise the people around me, so start to pack my book away. As I do the official bloke calls out some numbers and the man next to me points to my ticket. I thank him and get to the Desk.
I tell this man our phone number and he asks who owns the phone. I volunteer the name Kawther, our landlady, but it turns out that actually her son Tamer is registered as the owner of the phone. Our bill is 138.75LE for three months.
I ask the man when I need to pay again, as we don't want to get cut off. This turns out to be important; we get billed four times a year (January, April, July and October) and we then have 6 weeks to pay each bill. So in January, we have from the 1st of Jan to the 10th of Feb to pay. That seems straightforward enough and it is only when I am walking home that I realise we were a week away from being cut off for not paying the October bill!!
A good adventure, taking about 30 minutes in total. I'm glad we've got our bill sorted and will be telling everyone at school they need to sort theirs by the weekend or may be cut off!!