The Tower of Babel, Customer Service, and a Wireless Router

You know the origin of the word babel? Well the short version is that we humans tried to build a tower to reach the heavens and God didn't take too kindly to this challenge and gave us a smack down. He knocked down the tower and played a dirty joke on us. Previously, all mankind spoke a single language. Communication was universal. After our tower-building affront, God created a bunch of languages making it difficult, if not impossible for humans to communicate with each other. Hence the verb, "to babble," which means to speak without communicating anything.
Fast forward a few thousand years. I buy wireless router (as previously mentioned in the, "If One Night in Bangkok . . . " blog post. I can't get the damn thing to work right. I find the manufacturer's Hong Kong customer service number. I have no idea how to dial it as it does not resemble any of the 8-digit numbers I've dialed in HK. I attempt to call the operator for guidance. Guess what? Dialing zero doesn't get you anything in Hong Kong. So I have to hunt down the number for the operator. Turns out it's 10010. Not at all intuitive, but at least I'm moving forward. Operator tells me to dial all nine digits of the customer service telephone number. Fine. Whatever. All previous numbers have been eight digits. I dial the number. I get a recorded message - in Cantonese. Dammit. Wait, wait - "For Mandarin, please press 2." I'm translating because this recorded message was in Mandarin. So I press 2 because I speak Mandarin poorly (vs. Cantonese which I speak not at all). Now it gets really hairy. I have all kinds of options, "Press one for . . . press two for" . . . all in Mandarin of course. I just start pressing numbers until I get a live person on the other end of the line. Finally, I get a live body. She speaks English better than I speak Mandarin. We spend 45 minutes talking about things like IP addresses, SSID networks and such. I click on this, I click on that. She puts me on hold to consult her manual. I enter this. I enter that. I close out of this. I reboot that. Our conversation is about 50% English, 25% Mandarin, and 25% silence. Somehow, we got the wireless router up and running (which is obvious since I need internet access to create this blog entry) and I thank her profusely in two languages. I wish I had distilled spirits in the apartment to toast a small victory over God.