Bucolicisms

When we first got to Spain we had a dial up Internet connection. By the time we got to Culebrón we had Internet that came down the power cables; 1mb as I remember. I have no idea why but Iberdrola, the electricity retailer, dropped that service and left us in the lurch. At the time there was only one other reliable option, the old state telecoms company now branded as Movistar. They gave us 1mb too. Over the years, that increased to 3mb but that was as fast as they could go with the infrastructure they have.

Meanwhile a local company, Conecta3, had been cabling up Pinoso. After a while, they offered a service to the outlying villages too. The speed was better, 8mb, and their all in package for land line, Internet and mobile, was less than I was paying Movistar. I hesitated for a while because of the potential problems of switching but, in the end, it all went smoothly.

The firm has been good. They increased the speed out here in the sticks to 12mb  without increasing the price (I just checked a moment ago, it's running at 11.52 for download and 1.19mb for upload) and in town they are running at a very creditable 300mb. They also set up hotspots all over Pinoso so I can connect my mobile to Wi-Fi for free. The only time that we have had a real problem they had an engineer here within ten minutes. It turned out that the cat had pulled out some plug in the skein of cables where phones, Hi-Fi and lamps cohabit.

There's a Facebook page called something like Pinoso buying, selling and helping. Somebody asked, on that page, if anyone was having trouble with Conecta3 and I mentioned that the Internet service dropped out every now and then and that I needed to reconnect - a bit of a nuisance but not really a problem - I said.

A couple of hours later I got a private Facebook message from the boss at Conecta3, a chap that we know. He mildly chided me for not having reported the problem. He said that we'd missed out on an update to our antenna for some reason and that he hoped the oversight had now been remedied.

Living in a small place certainly has its advantages at times.

Change

I had a bit of a problem with an email group the other day. I'd never seen one before and it took me a few minutes to work it out. The person who'd set up the email also put together a group on WhatsApp before mistakenly deleting themself from the group. I bacame the group administrator by random asignation. Again it took me a few minutes to work out what was going on and reinstate him. Crikey I thought. I'm getting old. Losing touch with the technology.

We have a general Election on 20 December. I was listening to some pundit, presumably from a party that hadn't done well out of a newspaper poll, saying that polls were no longer a fair reflection of the voting population. His argument was that, because the pollsters telephoned people randomly on fixed phones, the sample was self selecting as only old people have fixed phones now. I bristled. That's not true I thought defensively. It's true that even I access the Internet more often from a tablet or my phone than I do from my laptop. Still though the serious work is done on the bigger screen with a proper keyboard and through an ADSL connection that trickles in through the telephone socket in the living room. It's going to be a long time before 4G, or any fast, reliable mobile network, is available in Culebrón or anywhere else outside the bigger population areas if the experience of the older 3G network is anything to go on.

Over the years that we've been in Spain we've nearly always had a contract with Telefónica or it's more recent incarnation - Movistar - the old state monopoly provider. However, because we've moved around quite a bit and often had second residences we've tried all sorts of other providers and used various methods of getting Internet access. All of the providers have pluses and minuses but, in Culebrón, Movistar was, at one time, our only option and until recently it has also been, clearly, the best option. We've had problems from time to time but generally the service has been fine. There is a problem now though; the highest Internet speed they can provide is 3MB. It just isn't enough. A local firm currently offers a heart quickening 8MB and it's a few euros a month cheaper too.

A couple of days ago, after prevaricating for ages I finally signed up. The new provider warned me to expect lots of calls from Movistar trying to persuade me to stay. Actually I had a sneaking hope that Movistar would pull the proverbial rabbit out of the hat and find those extra 5MB from somewhere. In that case I would have happily stayed with them. Instead their first salvo today was a text message warning me that I could be penalised for breaking contractual arrangements. They stressed that I would have to return any equipment that belongs to them. I laughed at the thought of returning their six year old non functioning router and the 11 year old fixed handset.

Cowardly as I am, I have never responded well to being pushed around. Cajoling, wheedling and wearing down work a treat - but threatening no.

My guess is that there will be fun to come as we change over. Pity there won't be any rabbits.

Badly informed - as usual

People tell me I complain. I usually think I am commenting or, more often, guffawing, at the preposterousness of whatever it may be. For instance in Of no fixed address

Anyway, as usual, I was wrong. Just ask Maggie. Always wrong. My address wasn't the real problem. True I had to go to Elda about 25 kilometres away where I was sent from one office to a second but once I was in the right place it took only a few seconds to change my address with the Social Security, with the Health people.

Back at the computer I applied for my European Health Card only to have the application turned down again. So I rang the helpline. I enjoyed the music and the mix of information and encouragement to not go away as the minutes ticked away.

The woman told me that I'm not employed, I'm not a pensioner and I'm not unemployed so I can't have a card. I explained that I have a job. She couldn't find me on the system and it took a while before she did. Ah, your contract ended at the end of June she said. Well, yes and no I replied. I have one of these fixed discontinuous contracts so I presume that although I'm not being paid I am considered to be employed. Not quite apparently. I have the right to claim unemployment pay and I would not be added to the unemployment statistics but unless I actually claim the dole I have no right to a health card. I checked that there was no problem with ordinary health care here in Spain and that was fine. I can get sick at home but not whilst I gad about Europe.

These contratos fijos discontinuos are designed for people who work in seasonal businesses. The job is yours when there's work but apparently the idea is that you go and draw the dole when the firm doesn't need you. Despite being entitled to unemployment pay people on these contracts are not registered as unemployed. A very odd situation and very easy for the firms to abuse I would have thought. Employ someone for eleven months until the summer holiday period, kick them loose with no need to pay them whilst they draw the dole and then take them on again when they have a nice tan. The other side is that people who have these contracts are unlikely to do much job hunting whilst they are temporarily out of work so they are a dead weight on the public purse. Apparently most of us on these contracts are women and lots of us work in food production, education and tourism.

Obviously my personal situation is a little strange. I'm sure that my boss would keep me working over the summer if I wanted to work. The truth is that it suits me and him for me to take a couple of months off. I avoid work and he doesn't have to employ somebody at a slacker time of the year. It has never crossed my mind to claim the dole.

I'd just better not get sick when we cross the border into Portugal over the summer.

Exponential

Maggie needed a new mobile phone. She lost her old number as a product of the house move back to Culebrón from Cartagena. We cobbled together a solution but when her HTC phone, which she has never taken to, started to have software problems she decided it was time to get a shiny new phone and  a brand new number.

The range of offers was bewildering. Contract or pay as you go. Real or virtual networks. Household names like Vodafone and Orange or newcomers like Pepephone? Eventually the choice was made about which phone and which set up.

There was a last minute scramble when the device they used in the Yoigo shop to scan identity documents wouldn't take a British passport. The passport was much thicker than the Spanish ID cards the scanner had been designed to cope with. Maggie's Spanish ID was no good as it didn't have a photo. They managed in the end though.

The thing that surprised me was the number. Spanish mobile numbers are nine figures long and begin with 6 whilst Spanish landlines are also nine numbers long and begin with a 9. Well, that's the general wisdom.

The mobile number assigned to Maggie begins with a 7. A new series. In Cartagena our landline number began with an 8. Spaniards often thought I was having a language problem when I gave them the number. "No, fixed lines begin with a 9," they said. One chap went so far as have me phone his mobile to confirm the number. He was very apologetic.

I seem to remember that the number of combinations in a series of numbers is worked out by simple multiplication. So for a nine number sequence it would be 9 times 9 times 9 times 9 times 9 times 9 times 9 times 9 times 9 or 387,420,489 variations. The initial 6 cuts this down to 43,046,721 choices. That's a lot of numbers. On the other hand there are around 47 million people in Spain and everyone  from the eldest granny to the smallest child has a mobile so, when I think about it, I'm surprised the 6 numbers lasted so long!