There’s a wonderful scene in Master and Commander where Captain Aubrey (Russell Crowe) asks Doctor Maturin (Paul Bettany) which of two biscuit weevils he would chose to survive were he to illustrate Darwin’s theory. After much deliberation, the Doctor chooses the weevil that looks slightly bigger and stronger than the other. Aubrey tells him that clearly his choice is incorrect as one is taught in Naval matters always to choose the lesser of two weevils (lesser of two evils – get it?).
Well Aubrey would do well on Tenerife where that’s precisely the criteria by which most decisions are made.
My life is a constant battle between two diametrically opposed forces. On the one hand I am forced to be as productive as is humanly possible in order to generate enough income to continue to live and work on Tenerife. The opposing force is my Internet signal. I have what is possibly the weakest router ever produced and if someone in Puerto switches a light on, my four green lights turn to red.
T S Eliot wrote: “I have measured out my life in coffee spoons”, well I have measured mine out in green lights.
I sit here for what must cumulatively be hours every day staring at the router and willing it to go from red, to one green light, then to two, then to three. Then an interminable wait while it decides, in between filing its nails and plucking its eyebrows, whether to bother getting to four or not. Sometimes it simply can’t be arsed and goes back to red where it plays traffic lights for a while; red, green, red, green, red.
When four green lights finally appear it’s frantic Googling and WordPress posting for as long as the window remains open. Efficient it is not; conducive to creativity it most certainly is not; extremely frustrating is what it is.
This week has been worse than ever; I can count on one hand the number of hours of uninterrupted Internet access I’ve had so far and yet I’m paying for 24/7 broadband.
Well, enough is enough, it’s time to bite the bullet and move away from Europa Network. Their overseas phone call rates may be excellent but their router belongs in the toilet.
And with whom must I now contract? Telefonica.
The lesser of two weevils.
Yep, Telefonica sucks majorly, but if it’s any consolation, they were faster, better and had less outages – even when I had their half-arsed service “up hill” (they said I’d only get only 500 KB of the 1 MB) to that village – than what I have now with Orange that falls down and needs rebooting with monotonous regularity.
And, once you have broadband that works, buy a subscription with Skype and you can make all your calls within Europe included for around a fiver a month.
Pamela, Geez…has the whole world forgotten how to be efficient? I blame Margaret Thatcher. I have no credible grounds for doing so, I just have a feeling it probably is her fault!
Leslie LOL And I have not given consent for your comment to be on here…just in case anyone’s listening!
Telecomms in Tenerife are uniformly rubbish, mainly because of Telefonica’s anti-competitive practices and lack of infrastructure. There’s a whole book of rants to be written by anyone who doesn’t mind their arse being sued off!
… allegedly.
I have to say we are with Telefonica, I shake every time I need to phone them as I know it will leave me exausted as they never understand anything you want to tell them. That said I find their English desk much better than if you talk to someone in South America at night
I try always to phone for help in the morning as you will then get somone in Spain who at least has some understanding.
Oh dear, Nikki, I can’t say you’ve made the prospect of contacting with them as my ISP any more attractive lol – but then I don’t have any illusions about what to expect. Thanks for the advice about when and where to call if (when?) I need to speak to them 🙂