It's tough to live without broadband so I got my mum to install a 512K ADSL line at her home in KL for me to use when I go back for vacations. I've been using it for about a year now, well, actually about 21 days because that's like how many days I went back last year. So far the service is pretty good except during the Taiwan earthquake last December and this last trip in June.

One day, in the evening, the Internet service just stopped working. At first I thought it was my connection. So I unplugged everything and turned it back on again. It did'nt work. I went into ipconfig to release and renew my IP address. Nothing seemed to work.

Just when I was about to give up (I actually didn't expect the Internet line was down since there were no major events), I thought I would give TM Net a call. I didn't know its number, so I called 103, the directory operator. They gave me another three-digit number to call. To my surprise, although it was 10pm, the technical help line was still open. That's when I found out that the Klang Valley area was facing service disruptions.

It was pretty frustrating not to be able to go online, and from speaking to my neighbor, it seemed that this was not uncommon. But what I was pleasantly surprised with was the excellent customer service provided by the operator!