The Blessing

well here i am typing on an asus pceee netbook being held in one hand while i peck away with the other on the &��&'( French keyboord, so fun. How did we get to this point, you might ask. Well France Telecom cut us off boopie, cold of them, no? I thought so too but given we ran out of money in our account that they draw their payment from, no wonder. The problem was less that they cancelled us exactly 10 days after the 10 day warning but that they told us that we could not even apply to have new service for 2 to 3 weeks! What? And poopsie, 96 Euros had to change hands before that would happen. They wouldn't let us pay right then even. So that was that. We paid up our past due amount and accepted our lowly status as France Telecom deadbeats and thought of that far off day when we could get connected again to the universe.

A day or two later upon going to our friends A&R,s place, A asked if I knew anything about the telephoney dongle things. Huh? Nope...what is it? She gave me a quick rundown and my mind, busy with the recent France Telecom debacle, perked right up! We vowed to sort this out for ourselves and find out what else might be possible in the line of broadband connections in our dear France.

The next day we were off to Bourges to shop the dongle department in good, ol' Darty. The salesman, techie showed us the 3G SFR and Orange dongles for using cell phone suppliers signals as broadband access. We were stoked! How much? Well... at first the deals sounded poorly, any more than what we had paid at FT was deemed to be too much but soon the figure of 50 Euros a month unlimitted came to light and Ted said he'd cover it! That seemed overly generous so we told him we'd split it with him. Then an astounding announcement came from the salesman, it was a package deal with an ASUS PC Eee netbook thrown in the deal for an additional 130 Euros! Further, it was with SFR, another carrier and the monthly unlimitted deal was only 32 Euros! Wow! After a visit to the nice lady who wrote everything down on her computer and we were delivered the tiny laptop that isn't we were off to home, dinner and a session on the internet as fast as I could unwrap the dongle from it's impossible packaging, plug it in and do the first timers dance with technology that we all go thru time and time again. This was particularly EASY, as the software was contained in the dongle itself and soon it began to blink in good dongle fashion
and l'viola! we were ON! Amazing...and s-l-o-w as molasses in January but at least we can get our emails, surf the net and decide on some other way to watch movies or tv shows as this speed will not allow those activities. It is hardly BROADBAND, more like NARROWBAND-AID but at least it's NOT France @#$#@#@! Telecom the bane of our existance online and of our bank account! A Blessing indeed!

What Else Is New?

Blog 4-08-08 A Monday
Ok, It's now Monday night, no...I don't have a telephone and with that said...I have no Internet as well. We went to the Tourist Office this morning to consult with our resident French Cultural and Technology Specialists E and MC, MC was caught up in another major operation regarding a new computer being installed in the office for use by patrons...like us. E called the lovely folks at France Telecom for an explanation of why did we receive a notice this morning of some billing issue re the NEW phone number when there is NO DIAL TONE on the aforesaid telephone line. They referred her to the technical office who is sending out a techie tomorrow morning...er ah by 1pm that is to check our line and find out why they think our line is GOOD and we have no telephone instead. When we disengaged ourselves from the office I came home and checked the telephone in another socket, no hope, doesn't work. Oh well, someone who really KNOWS how this system works will be here tomorrow with luck and maybe oh maybe we will get connected. What a bore this is.
We have a dinner planned with friends Thursday evening. Thai food promised, but what they will get is my interpretation of Thai food using French ingredients and my addled memory of the recipes of my books in California as I have none of those here. So yes, I'm faking it a bit but I understand the differences between Thai and Chinese and Vietnamese and their similarities as well so it'll be a good fake I hope. A soup with lemongrass and ginger, nems with pork and spring vegetables, Oyster Sauce Beef with red peppers and snow peas, Thai Shrimp Curry over rice, apple/ginger tart al a mode. Wish me luck.
So today we worked on the walls of the dining room, YES THE Dining Room we will be using night after next for the Thai dinner. Hanging cloth by the yards, quite a process, nailing up the wood strips to hold the cloth on all sides, hanging the cloth with installed battens at the top edge of heavy paper after placing the fuzzy stuff over the area that the cloth will cover. It looks great though and we are almost through with the 3rd of the 4 walls with only the window wall left to complete. I doubt we will get that part done before the dinner but we will see.
Kelly went to the doctor that speaks english today, first this morning to find the office open, warm and empty with a notice saying the first patients will be seen at 2pm. So she returned home to continue the wall project, it's a three block walk more or less so not a lot of time was wasted. At 2pm she went back to see 9 patients sitting in the room and decided that was a bit too much of a wait for her sensibilities today so she came home again. Maybe tomorrow.