Global Village Idiots   

Looking for @ in all the wrong places.

IN A CRAMPED CORNER of a Zurich hotel lobby a few weeks ago, I got a humbling little reminder of the human limitations of the communications revolution.
Toward the end of a too-brief continental vacation, my reverie was interrupted when I checked into that Swiss hotel and found a fax waiting for me. It was an apologetic note from my office about a matter that required prompt attention. I was directed to the hotel's "Internet station"--a laptop computer chained to a desk next to the reservation counter.
I dropped my bags, confronted the screen and bravely slogged through the German directions to get to the Web. Then I prepared to send the critical e-mail that promised to un-stick those bureaucratic wheels more than 3,000 miles away. The computer keyboard, while generally familiar, was different from those back in the States and took some getting used to. The punctuation marks were all over the place, and the Z and Y keys had been transposed ("Greetings from Yurich# wish zou were here^").
But what really threw me was the @ key. If your aim is to send an e-mail, that's a fairly important key. On American keyboards, of course, you obtain it by hitting Shift 2; most of us do it dozens of times a day without thinking. But on this keyboard, the @ was one of two symbols over the 2, and nothing--not the Shift key, not the Control command, not the Alt command, not even that stupid Windows command key (what does it do?)--would make the @ materialize. Nor would various combinations of same.
I prevailed on the Swiss desk clerk for assistance. She tried the same commands I had; she rebooted the computer--nothing. By this time some Israeli students were checking in, and several ambled over to see what the fuss was. The clerk logged on under her own name and tried again--still nothing. Then arrived a group of about 10 Japanese businessmen, and, seeing the huddle, they too packed in around and became engrossed in my plight. It was a warm afternoon, and by now the scrum was so tight that I hoped my deodorant was hanging in there. An international coalition of fingers poked at the board, accompanied by a veritable Babel of grunts, snorts and imprecations. The scene was a cross between a bad sitcom and a United Nations plenary session. And still no @.
One by one my new friends, with much better things to do, drifted away, leaving me to my own ineptitude. In other circumstances I might have fallen back on the old reliable--a hammer. Not having one at hand, all I could do was keep pecking pitifully, abjectly, at the keys. Which I did for another 10 minutes, until, suddenly, there it was. The magic, elusive @. I sent the message and returned to my by-now- starving family.
I would like to report to you which combination of keys it was that produced the @, but I can't. I was so startled at my success that I forgot to notice.
There is no moral to this story. Or maybe there is: The universal language is no longer love; sadly, it's computer exasperation.