Not quite Hurricane Irene

It’s just typical that the moment I decide I am reblogging our internet goes up in a  puff of smoke. Actually it just sort of fizzled out.

We had a storm on Saturday night; quite a humdinger. I am reluctant to make a big deal of our storm because at the same moment Hurricane Irene was rampaging up the east coast of America. During the rainy season we get lots of big, impressive storms and yes, I’m sure some of them do some damage but they aren’t hurricanes. I do have some perspective.

We arrived home, Husband from dropping Daughter at a friend’s and I from my ‘office’ at Starbucks Emporium, to find the apartment in darkness and a very stroppy Son flumpy footing it around the apartment. He’d just clocked off from working and was about to start getting on with his real life (computer game of the moment) when all the power cut out.

We’d planned a curry and a film. The lights stayed out for quite some time. Husband worried that he might run out of Angry Birds battery power and I was trying to read by candlelight. Son continued to strop around. And then there was light, shortly followed by the curry delivery. Hurrah!

Internet fairies fail to show up

I declared yesterday ‘sorting out internet day.’

I’ve scanned the internet and there seem to be a number of Apple Macs falling off the internet but no apparent diagnosis. Because I have a PC sitting next to it, which ISN’T falling off the wifi I know it’s the Mac. Both our January visitors had Macs which did the same thing.

I was home all day for engineers to call so I put the problem in the hands of the management office who have a contract with the service provider – and after all, who we are paying for ‘internet service.’ As a result ‘sorting out internet day’ flew by; nobody called and I still have no internet on my Mac. Lots of lovely wifi airwaves whirling around in the air but none of them attaching themselves to the new computer.

While I was in the management office, I picked up a parcel. It was a garganuan pile of post from our house in the UK and was posted on 9th December! While I waited for the internet fairies to come I got all of that post dealt with. After five years of living in Bangkok, I finally got around to changing my address at the UK bank. I’m a firm believe that if you leave your paperwork in a ‘To Do’ pile for long enough, much of it can be put straight in the bin when you finally get around to dealing with it.

Today I woke and in a Groundhog kind of way, declared the day ‘sorting out internet day.’ Then I had a stroke of genius – they don’t happen often – and googled the name of the wifi repeater we have. Doh; they only work on Window OS. I still don’t have internet, but at least now I know why.

Wonderful

Isn’t the internet wonderful?

Here I am, sitting in my little office – which is actually a dressing area so I’m surrounded by wardrobes and a mirror (euwgh) - in Bangkok. But, but I can still do research. I’ve just watched videos of badgers at night. How brilliant is that? Six thousand miles away and I can study the gait and noises of a badger in the UK.

Don’t forget to look in at Tea Stains tomorrow as I’m hosting one of the dates on Sue Guiney’s blog tour for the launch of the paperback of Tangled Roots. I'm asking Sue some questions and there could even be refreshments!

Internet Mai Sabai

Sharp eyed folks out there might have seen that my last post was courtesy of my lovely, lovely (have I told you how much I love and adore it?) Blackberry.

That’s because our internet was misbehaving at home. Son had a new game he was subscribing to online, and he’d bought at upgrade, so sod’s law said our internet would fall over and flatly refuse to get up again.

We tried all the usual fixes, of turning it off and on again (this is a very technical IT trick I’ve learned because I’m lucky enough to have Husband who works in IT). Son got cross, whined, blamed everyone, hassled Husband who grumbled and whined back, before pressing the RED (on No Account Press) button that wipes out our internet account. And if you think it’s tough dealing with internet providers in the Western world, you should try it in Thailand! Because my Thai is restricted to ‘Where is the toilet?’ ‘Turn left/right here’ ‘Go straight’ ‘Vegetable/Chicken Fried rice please’ ‘Beautiful’ ‘pain’ ‘not well’ and ‘well, thank you.’ None of which helps much, although I think I could say ‘Internet, mai sabai’ which roughly translates to ‘Internet not well.’

So now, believe it or not, I’m sitting in the foyer of our local hospital because I came to pick up a prescription. They have wifi here … but I can’t stop and visit all my blog friends because I’ve got a website lesson now. Hopefully the internet will be fixed and I'll be around for a cup of tea.