New technologies

I don't think I am a technophobe at heart, but sometimes the pace of new technologies gets the better of me.  I was the first in my street to own a PC in 1987, an Amstrad with one of those tickertape printers (do you remember those?).  I had a personal web page in 1994  (it took hours to craftt).  And I thought then that the future of theworld began with the prefix www.

The integration of mobile phone technologies with computer power has completely bemused and frustrated me.  I delayed buying  a smart phone for years.  After I did it soon dawned on me that I was (am) not smart enough to use it.  Its taken me years to learn how to use GPS, partly based on the fear of raising huge mobile data charges).  I resist downloaded any apps because I don't want to use my google e-mail accounts (I have a dozen because I don't remembe the passwords figuring I'll never use them again).  I don't know how to load pictures directly fom my phone to my blog and it is too much hassle to plug the phone into my PC when I get home to uplaod them. When I tried to set my mobile to receive e mails from my e mail set up with domain name it corrupted my account  with my host provider, necessitating three hours of phone calls from  an edge the edge of reception area in Entre Deux Mers (which meant sitting in my car runing my laptop off of its battery close to a reception point)  and the provider in the Netherlands.  The tail is definitely wagging the dog.

Sometimes its good to go back to techologies you understand.  Like this one.  While Iwas cooking a mixed up a jar full of Gomasio.  The trick is to just up a crush a bit a time.  Pour two tablespoons of sesame seeds  into the mortar and sal to taste and grind to a coarse powder. The scent lets you when each batch is ready.  A technology that engages more of the senses.    

Sun screen

I went to look for some sun screen yesterday.  In Belgium I didn't have much need to buy it very often.  Here in Hendaye it has become a more regular item on my shopping list.   A 25ml bottlecomes in at around 20-30 Euro.  Thats more than my (organic) shopping bill for three to four days: more expenisive per litre than a bottle of Grand Cru!  Can somone please tell me what the secret and obviously very expensive ingredient is?  I'm suspecting it's a mixture of fear and vanity. 

Name and shame

This month's raspberry for corporate malpractice goes to Philips- one of the country's leading iconic brands- for having a replacement components pricing system that encourages the throwaway society.

I've had Phillips electric razor for about four years and recently decided it was time to change the blades, as it doesn't shave as well as it used to. My local shop quoted me (deep breath) 45 Euro for the blades - and told me that a new razor (same model) costs 69 Euro. Today I saw the saw the same model in a discount shop for (guess what) 45 Euro. Economically it makes sense to buy the new model - ecologically it seems so wasteful. So if anyone from the public affairs department of Philips is reading this perhaps they can explain why a replacement set of blades retails at the same price as a new electric razor. It would be interesting to know. In the meantime guess whose products I am not going to buying.

As a postscript I have decided to cut and paste this blog to the relevant department at Philips to see if they do have an explanation.

I hear words I never heard in the Bible

Today was a busy day- made busier by getting a call at lunchtime from an ex-colleague, friend and client who wanted a job application letter checking over before the end of the afternoon. Normally I don't do (or get asked to do) rush jobs - but sometimes one should make an exception.
Twice in the afternoon I was interrupted by sales agents from KPN - telling me about all the wonderful discounts they would offer me if I signed up a contract until the end of December 2009 (only they didn't mention this bit until having asked me if I thought it was a good deal!). Twice in the same afternoon!! The first time I asked if they would take me off of their direct calls sales list - as I am tired of them pestering me with special offers on an almost monthly basis. (The only worse ones are people cold calling to ask if I have made plans for my funeral. What would they do if they called someone contemplating suicide? Are they trained in counselling?)On the second call from KPN I lost it (to my shame) shouted down the phone (in a combination of Dutch and English ) that I will change my telecoms company if they don't get off my case and that they can send details of any special offers in writing so I can read them and think about them.
I try to make a point of being polite to cold callers - I know they are either college students working their way through college or less qualified workers who resent their jobs and work under strict time and motion control procedures. But today was too much. Does anyone know how to get off their calling lists? In the UK there is a "Mailing Preference List" (which also applies to cold calls). "Mailing Preference List." Isn't that wonderful example of how the English obfuscate? I guess they couldn't have sold it as a voluntary code of behaviour to the industry if they called it the Junk Mail and Unwanted Sales Calls List. I only know about because my father regularly complained to me about getting unwanted calls and a bag full of junk mail every month. (It took him months to find something new to complain about after that). Does anything like that exist here?
Despite these interruptions I made good progress today - got my head around three
important Dutch verbs / construction forms in my Dutch lesson - got my friend's covering letter looking ship shape and worked out a protocol for dealing wth a particularly problematic mixture of English and French acronyms - used inconsistently thoughout a document. I've had my English, Dutch and French dictionaries spread acroos my desk already this week and feel like a real language worker!

It's like a ghost town here - 60% of the inhabitants must be away. Still it makes it a good time to get appointments for the dentist / optician/ hairdresser go to the bike repair shop etc. Also the perfect weather to go dipping in the Rhine.

Ghost town

Back to Wageningen - but it's not quite the town I am familiar with. The car parks and streets are empty and people in the shops are queueing up to serve you. My e-mail in-box is taking in about 60% less messages than usual. The Dutch holiday season has begun. Good time to book appointments with opticians and barbers. Not a good time to maintain social contacts - most of the social networks I belong to have closed down for two months.

Several of my acquaintances / friends (real time and virtual) are making rumbling noises about it being time for them to move on (leave the NL). I sympathise with their situation. Being single in a foreign culture is twice as hard work. Those I know with kids just put their noses to the grindstone and get on with it.

For my part I have spent half of the past two months in the "motherland". I fully expect that to be 25% of my time for the remainder of the year. Questions of holidays (I was looking at a trekking holiday in the Pyrenees or Croatia) are just not even on the agenda for reasons of time and money. I'm just trying to make the best of it.

Since I was away the Dutch government introduced the ban on smoking in bars and cafes. My local squat pub (which I haven't visited for about three months) has a notice posted on its window, regretting the fact that smoking tobacco is no longer permitted in their premises. They were hoping that as a private members club they might get away with it (you can still smoke pure grass there though). But the latest wave of health fascism (and this is not rhetorical - the German Nazi party were the first government to seek to ban smoking in public places) takes no prisoners. Why is it that our governments - who purport to believe in the market and freedom of choice - impose these things on their citizenry? I fully support the possibility of smoke free bars. I would just choose not to patronise them. In the UK the Wetherspoons chain went smoke free about three years ago - and found their custom down by 20%. In England everywhere you go now you see boarded-up pubs for sale. A combination of the locals not wanting to go any more, combined with their huge resale estate value.

This is nanny state writ large. And it doesn't work. Cocaine is illegal in the UK (and I think everywhere else in the EU). On my last visit to the UK I read that health and safety inspectors in Chelsea and Kensington - probably the UK's richest and most trend setting municipality - found traces of cocaine in the toilets of 98% of licenced premises that they surveyed. Prohibition doesn't work. I recognise that excessive cocaine, tobacco or marijuana use are not good things for society - or the individuals concerned. But how can governments control or cajole people, without infringing on their civil liberties or creating an underworld that feeds and grows prosperous on the very things the state is trying to control?

Answers on a postcard please

Milk snatcher to be given state funeral

Am I alone in thinking that the decision to give the milk snatcher a state funeral is an affront to British democratic values? What positive contribution did she make to British society? Was it
a. destroying (sorry modernising) the UK's coal and steel industries?
b, selling off most of Britain's social housing at knock down prices so the new home owning 'elite' would feel like conservatives and vote for her party (sorry, creating a home owning democracy)?
c. selling off every UK publicly owned enterprise at prices where the stock values doubled overnight in order to finance "tax cuts" (sorry, creating a share owning and enterprise culture) ?
d. enhancing the UK's role on the European stage?, or
e. sinking a Argentinian battleship full of conscripts that was trying to surrender? (Rule Brittania)
Makes you proud to be British doesn't it?
And her legacy now runs on through her family with her son making a unique contribution to peace and democracy in Western Africa.
There's a line in a Lindisfarne song (remember them)- "We'll dance on your grave 'till the flowers return." I suspect that not the whole country will be in mourning on the passing of Lady Thatcher.

Keep the customer satisfied?

I have blogged before about companies who seem to not want to attract any more business than they have already. I found another one last week. I was browsing the web site of a company who specialise in publishing self help legal documents. You know the kind of stuff, How to make a will, get divorced, get on the property ladder (usually the chronology runs the other way but you get the idea). Anyway I found one pack that looked useful but couldn't find any reference to another one that I was looking for. So I mailed to ask if they did a publication on this topic. I got a very rapid response. Here it is
Thank you for your email unfortunately (company name deleted) cant help with this matter. Regards.

So I then went to the check out cart to order the book that they did have that I wanted. I found that my postcode was invalid and there was no space to enter that I lived outside the UK. Having spent a few minutes registering as a customer and putting all my details into their system I felt a bit peeved about this and kept the page open to see if there was some trick that could be used to get around this problem. I assumed that they might want to speed one of their books on its way to me. So I wrote to ask how I could pay and again got a very rapid response, which ran.
Thank you for your email unfortunately our website will only accept credit cards with UK address and we only dispatch to the UK. Regards

Well that wasn't too much of a problem as the book could be dispatched to the UK and I could collect it there. So I wrote to ask if there was another way in which I could pay - possibly with an electronic transfer from a UK bank. The reply soon came back:
The only way you can get the book you require is to get someone in the UK to purchase for you. We can't give bank details for mail order customer. Regards

This was now beginning to feel like Monty Python's cheese shop sketch - except instead of thinking up excuses for why they didn't have a certain kind of cheese it was more about what payment methods I couldn't use. I was also starting to get irritated by the lack of any apology or constructive thinking on their sales team's part. I fired off a final salvo:
I appreciate your very rapid responses. I run a business and I realise how important that is. I am surprised how disinterested you seem in attracting custom. Is it possible to pay for the book with a cheque drawn on a British bank account? Regards
I deleted the line that I was going to write about being a blogger who sometimes writes about (lack of) customer service. I didn't want to raise the temperature any more on a Friday afternoon.
Finally I got a reply that they would send me the book on receipt of a cheque drawn on a British account (but only probabaly after it has cleared as well).
It just left me wondering - am I grumpy old man or is this company really badly adapted to doing business in the 21st Century?

Bad moon rising?

This morning's preparations for the day were interrupted by an urgent phone call from the hospital back in England. Last night my father was found wandering around the streets by the police and taken to hospital. He said the next day that it was someone who looked him and that he was at home all the time. He is, what they call, vulnerable. And a danger to himself. Long conversations with social worker, discussing the options. Not good. Much soul searching on my part.

He has clearly indicated that he would like me to live close to (his) home and be able to come and check on him every day (or few days). Part of me would like to do that - but another (and larger) part does not want to give up the home I have just established and relocate the business that I have built up in the past five years to go to live in the most expensive city in Europe, that I left almsot thirty years ago. Heart and head at conflict on ths one. I chill out by taking Bella dog out for a walk and run through the possibilities in my head among nature. Am I selfish or am I legitimately protecting my own interests? I have seen someone give up years of her life to move in with and nurse an elderly surviving parent through her dotage. I have been warned against it by others. Not sure if it is the right decision to make, though it would feel like a noble one.
For the time being R is going to stay in a Residental Home, his needs met and some protection for him. Next week I will be back there anyway as planned and hope to see him feeling settled rather than distraught. When the plan was suggested to him he seemed to welcome it: said he would like the company. When I spoke to the manager and looked at their web site it semed like a nice caring place - and possibly a more supportive environment than being alone in a small flat. If it chews up his savings then so be it. I would rather he had quality care - and I don't thnk I could provide that. The resntement that I would feel about giving up the life I have here would soon undermine any attempt to do the caring thing with any commitment.

Tuesdays with Bella

Tuesdays in recent months I have been dog-sitting a wonderful retriever cross who belongs to a close friend of mine. He (the friend) has to cope with a full time job - a 50% child care arangement and looking after an old but active hunting dog. Taking Bella under my wing on Tuesdays was no problem - indeed even a pleasure. On fine days I would pick her up from W's house in the morning, drive to the arboretum, walk her through the woods and along the dyke into town, give her a walk or ball throwing session at lunchtime and then walk her back to the car in the evening. Both she and I got lots of exercise.
This pattern changed about a month ago when the manager of the business centre where I rent an ofice in pointed out to me that having dogs on the premises was against the contract (which is in Dutch so I never really checked the very fine print). I felt a bit pissed off. Bella sat in my office for a few hours a day - didn't cause any problems and several other leasers of offices and centre employees had been bringing in their dogs into the centre on an occasional basis without any problem. A month after this petit contretremps I am still trying to walk Bella on Tuesdays - but it requires a lot more forethought, planning and petrol consumption. And it has led me to at reconsider my future office leasing options, largely on principle as I have always rebelled against people and systems that seek to impose petty rules. As an independent agent I find it increasingly difficult to accept arbitary rules and regulations (more about this on unilateral and universal smoking bans later) that do not have a logical justification.

On the buses

This is the longest time I have spent in Britain since I left these shores five and half years ago and I feel like a bit of a tourist "at home". Seeing how much some things have changed and how little others have. And of the things that seem to have changed wondering how much is down to the changes I have made myself in that time. People here seem more confident and open than I remember - but is that really them or me? There's a lot of Polish spoken on the streets and that is clearly independent of any changes I have made. And London's buses have got a whole lot better. They are frequent, clean, relatively graffiti free, have a simple and cheap fare and payment structure and many routes have real time information systems showing when the next bus is due. Also, some real thought seems to have gone into redesigning the routes so that instead of being like spokes of a wheel radiating from a central hub, there are also many radial services that link outlying suburbs. For example nearly all the suburbs around Kingston now have direct links to the hospital (1.5 km out of town) rather than requiring a trip into Kingston and then out on the bus that happens to pass the hospital. That requires real attention to user needs. When you cross the greater London border and try to use the buses there you can see the difference in quality and service. They cost twice as much, are infrequent and often don't turn up. My first day in London I was just outside the GLC boundary - I checked the bus times - one at 8.30, the next at 10.15 - (obviously meeting public demand for transport in the morning) and the 8.30 bus didn't show up until 9.20. What level of customer commitment does that show? What level of customer loyalty can they expect? No wonder the road was snarled up with single occupancy cars all the way into Kingston.

Much of the reason for the improvement in London's buses can be directly attributed to the commitment of Ken Livingstone. Londoners voted him out of office earlier this month-largely over allegations about cronyism, nepotism and corruption among the black community groups that were being financially supported by City Hall. Now London will be run by a Tory Mayor. Ironic in a sense since it was the Tories who abolished the GLC, claiming there was no need for a strategic city wide authority. British tribalism is hard to explain to foreigners. My Labour friends and acquaintances think Boris is going to destroy Ken's achievements in building a pluralistic and tolerant London with a much improved public transport system. I rather think he might he might have achieved a change in zeitgeist in London, rather like Thatcher did in Britain. A change that is so profound that Boris, like Blair will have no choice but to continue in the path of his predecessor. The colour of the party may have changed but I rather the main policies and discourses are set in stone 'till the next the crisis forces a fundamental rethink.

Down by the river, and into the river we dive

I got all my commitments put to bed today (to use a publishing term) . Two annual NGO reports - one mega PhD chapter and a proofread of half of a PhD where the tenses and use of 'the' and 'it' needed checking. 6pm I got on my bike and headed down to the river to have what felt like a symbolic swim - the first of the year. Immersed myself in the cold waters of the Rhine - and made a promise to myself to be back soon and not let myself be a slave to my business or my past.

All my bags are packed and I am ready to go

but unfortunately not to Bonn, the (bio) diversity festival on the banks of the Rhine and a week of socialising, networking, worst and sauerkraut. Rather to Kingston and the banks of the Thames and some time sorting out my father's (what looks like mental) health problems. Tuesday I got a call from the warden of the sheltered community where he lives telling me Reg was in hospital. The next day I found out that this was more a psychological rather than physical or life threatening condition and didn't entail geting on a plane the next day. So most of this week I have been cancelling appointments, meeting existing deadlines, sub-commissioning work to others and most of all preparing myself emotionally to deal with a situation that is going to bring out a lot of internal angst. Sunday I fly to London, Monday I have meetings with doctors and social workers. Today I am trying to avoid thinking about worse case scenarios before they are really there.

We don't really want your business

I think I have posted before about the difficulties of doing business with NSI -the international branch of the Dutch railways. Their diligence in attracting customers through such means as: having a web site in English, a wide range of destinations available on that web site, a phone line which call centre staff answer or sufficient staff to serve physical customers at one of their ten or so offices scattered across the country must be a text book example of how not to generate any unwanted customers.

In fact they are so customer unfriendly that last year I decided to fly to Grenoble rather than take the train. I couldn't book my ticket online - Grenoble is not one of the stations they list (it has to be on the TGV line), I couldn't get through to their phone line and in the run up to Christmas I couldn't afford the two and a half hours I calculated it would take me to travel to Arnhem or Utrecht and back and queue for 45 minutes - the average time I have waited before for international tickets. It was easier to do book a flight with a click of a few buttons. Sorry planet.

Next week I am off to Bonn. Its less than three hour's journey from here (with two changes) and quite a well known German city. But do they have on it listed in their selection of destinations? No. It is possible to check the journey times and connections - but to book a ticket - no way, it's not on the main high speed line. And the phone lines are engaged (all afternoon). And I don't have time to take off to go and queue for a ticket. So instead I book a ticket through to Koln (Cologne). It costs 31 Euro return. That is probably less than the cost of the petrol to drive one way. Koln through to Bonn is half an hour on the regional train and I can buy a ticket at Koln Hbf. So I am a happy bunny at having for once short circuited NSI's inaccesible ticketing system and having got me the bargain of the month. I would be happier if NSI were a bit more user friendly. But at prices like those perhaps they don't actually want to sell too many tickets. There are ticket agencies who charge more than this for processing applications.