Duelling remotes

My husband and I splurge on NOVA, one of the satellite TV options available here in Greece. I say splurge in honor of my mother, who never thought we should pay for television and therefore never had cable TV. Sure, we don’t need satellite TV (cable isn’t a option here in Greece), but by Zeus we want satellite TV.

Anyway, because I never read that article about marriage that says “don’t have a TV in the bedroom” we have a TV in our bedroom. It is also hooked up to our satellite box, and out of sheer laziness (since the bedroom is right next to the TV room) we got one of those odd little devices that allows you to use a remote on equipment in a different room, because Zeus forbid I have to get out of bed to change the channel.

This little setup worked like a charm until a week or so ago, when our satellite box suddenly started turning on and off and switching channels of its own apparent will. I have heard of a ghost in the machine, but this was flippin’ ridiculous. At first it was a bit amusing, but then things got out of hand. We couldn’t watch anything without the channels suddenly changing at a breakneck speed. After a couple of days of this errant behavior, we decided it was because one of our neighbors must have recently got hooked up with NOVA and thus was able to change our channels through our odd little channel changing device.

Although we cannot tell what channels the neighbor is surfing, we are able to discern some things about him or her. For one, they must work an evening shift, because they always turn on their box around 2 or 3am and then turn it off around 6am (yes, I’m a night owl that watches too much TV sometimes). We also know that this person is some kind of freak of nature, because he or she changes channels so quickly there isn’t even time to read what is on the information display bar or see what is on, and if they are heading to a particular channel, obviously they are way too stupid to realize you can just put the channel number in the remote and go directly to your desired channel with a great deal of ease. This would also annoy us less, obviously, because it would be quicker for us to just change our channel back to what we were watching without having to go back five thousand times because the person is speed clicking through 100 channels.

Finally, we have resorted to unplugging the odd little device, because it just isn’t worth battling with the crazy channel changing neighbor anymore. I really can’t believe the damn signal works through apartments, as I would assume the walls between apartments are thicker than the walls within the apartments. Hell, sometimes even the damn device won’t even work for me through one little stupid wall. How is it working across apartments for surfer Giannis?

I’m glad that in the next year we will be moving to our own little house, up high on a mountain, far from the big city. Then I’ll be queen of my remote control once again.