Two

The 96 hours have long passed and your phone numbers still haven't been ported over. You've been carrying around two phones now for the better part of a week and have found that there is at least one advantage to doing so - that you can listen to your 5 mp3 tunes on one phone and check the time on the other. You have forgone wearing a watch now for almost four years - it's so 18th century. However you still have an irrational fear that one day, when you have your tunes turned up loud, someone is going to tap you on the shoulder and point out that your other phone has been ringing for the past five minutes and could you please answer it. Of course the other irrational fear you have is that they'll both ring at exactly the same time.

By now you're starting to really get pissed at the level of customer service and so you ring up Goa to find out when the numbers will be ported. Strangely enough it takes less than five minutes to get through to a human being and so you're more than a little surprised when an unaccented female voice inquires about your problem. 'Maybe I have the wrong number,' you think. You decide to answer anyway and before long the woman has your record up on her screen and is reading the details back to you. You stress that the number porting is taking entirely too long and she agrees with you - although you do note that when she is placed under stress traces of a sub-continent accent peeks out. She says that she will have to have someone call you. You ask, 'In an hour, six hours, a day?' She answers that it will depend on the queue and that it will be between the hours of nine and five. You ask her, 'Is that Eastern, Western or where you are?' She ignores the obvious implication of your question and politely informs you that all times are Australian Eastern Standard Time.

You hang-up and go about your day. Half-an-hour later you receive a call. It is a woman. An Australian woman. From Three services. She mumbles and so it takes a moment to understand what she's saying. You get her to repeat it. 'I'm from Three Services and I'm ringing because you said you wished to cancel your contract.' You get her to repeat it a third time. Not because you didn't hear her the second time, but because you can't believe what you just heard and need further evidence of the Universe's vast practical joke that is your life. 'No,' you answer levelly, 'I just want my numbers ported over.' 'Oh,' she says, obviously taken aback. It sounds like she's pumped herself up ready for a fight and now that energy has nowhere to go. 'I'll call you back,' she says and hangs up before you have a chance to ask her when. She never does.

And so we enter Day Six...