I got to work today and in typical fashion I was asked to tackle a problem even before I put my bag down at my desk. A Japanese fellow had been waiting for 1/2 hour for me. His laptop wouldn't connect to Internet. It had been doing just fine in many other places and cafes, but not ours. His laptop was installed in Japanese, not English. Awesome.
I was able to diagnose the problem and fix it without reading any of the text, only the symbols, icons and memorization of common tabs and buttons. Turns out the ethernet card was disabled and a static IP address had been assigned for a 192.168.1.xxx network and we use 192.168.0.xxx. My guess is that the previous visits to other cafes used a .1 subnet and so his static address worked fine.
After I fixed it, I pulled up his browser, Yahoo loaded. He vigorously pumped my hand and then gave me a deep bow (my first). When he was done he gave me a $5 tip and promised to come back tomorrow.
3 comments:
You rock! That's so awesome!
round of applause for you. that's a satisfying feeling, successfully communicating in another language. ordering breakfast in Barcelona, completely in Spanish (which I haven't taken since jr. year of high school), and getting that facial expression of pleasant surprise from the waitress. Probably not the same scale of gratification as your story, but one I remember nonetheless.
I am in awe of your technological abilities.
I barely know how to turn the computer on, let alone do it in Japanese.
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