All I Wanted For Christmas was DSL

I’m in Providence now, having arrived here in the early evening of New Year’s Eve, weary and under the weather from some mysterious bug that had me feeling light-headed and suffering from diarrhoea. I was almost delirious on the bus from Boston to Providence, but I was mostly recovered after a single good night’s sleep, which was good.

My New Year was, therefore, completely uneventful. I was asleep as 2006 rolled in. It’s good to be back with the missus and the small one, of course.

The KPN has completely failed to move my DSL line from the old house to the new, so I was off-line until arriving here. That was still the status quo as of the 31-12, so I have no idea whether I’ll finally have DSL when we get back to Amsterdam on the 13th. Since they should have had me up and running on 21-12, you’d think so, but you daren’t make that assumption with the KPN.

Tomorrow morning, Sarah, Eloïse and I fly down to Maryland to spend a few days with Tim, Fenella and their children, Cameron and Willow. It’s close to a year since we last saw them, so that will be a lot of fun. Needless to say, they’ll be meeting Eloïse for the first time, which should be quite exciting.

For my own purposes, I kept some notes on the goings on over the immediate post-move period. I hereby force them on you.

Wednesday 21st December

Another long day.

We awoke early, thanks to yesterday’s alarm not having been reset, so it went

off today, too. Unlike yesterday, however, we awoke for the first time in our

new house. We’ve really moved!

Our Hästens 2000T is comfortable beyond belief. One has to spend a night

in one of these things to appreciate how well made it really is. I didn’t want

to get out of it this morning, but we had another busy day ahead of us.

This morning was a bit of a rush. Sarah had forgotten some essential items

from the old place, so I jumped on the bike and headed over there to pick them

up.

Stopping at the bakery on the way back, we had our first makeshift breakfast

at our borrowed dining-room table. There wasn’t enough time to really enjoy

it; it was more a question of stuffing down some nourishment while we had the

chance.

We had decided that it would be too crazy for me to take Sarah to the airport

in a Greenwheels car, so we had booked her a taxi. Just before it arrived,

the KPN engineer turned up to install an analogue line here. While he was in

the cellar, I said goodbye to Sarah and Eloïse outside.

The KPN engineer eventually got the line up and running and asked me to sign

his paperwork, so he could be off. I decided to test the line before doing so

and discovered that it had the wrong phone number. It turns out that the two

lines belonging to the previous occupant are still active. What’s more bizarre

is that the KPN cannot cancel a line based on the say-so of the person trying

to have a new line installed, even if that person can prove he owns the house.

Luckily, the box of wires downstairs has enough capacity that I don’t care if

the previous owner wants to continue to pay for a couple of lines.

Eventually, after speaking to the office, he reconnected the wires for our new

line and left, informing me that he had opened a ticket to have a switch

thrown in the telephone exchange.

Unforunately, our ground floor turns out not to be cabled, so I had to install

the cordless phone’s base station on the first floor. Since it will be

annoying to have to go upstairs to see if there’s a message on the

digital answerphone, I’ve made a new appointment with the KPN to install

another analogue socket on the ground floor in the new year.

A couple of hours later, the line still wasn’t working, so I called in to

check on its progress. It was being worked on, I was told.

A few minutes later, another KPN engineer turned up at the door. He informed

me he was here to test the line at this address, so I told him there was no

working line yet. Oddly, he hadn’t been sent in connection with the open

ticket to fix the line.

After verifying that it did, indeed, not work, he headed out to the wiring box

in the street to fix the problem there. Before he left, I laughingly asked him

if I could soon expect a third engineer to show up.

Ten minutes after that guy had left the house, a third engineer did, indeed,

turn up. He also knew nothing of the visits by the previous two engineers. He,

too, went downstairs and verified that my line did not work; then he, too,

left.

A few minutes later, the phone rang and the line was working. Hallelujah.

Of course, that was just the telephone line: what about DSL?

To cut a long story short, DSL doesn’t work yet. After two calls to the KPN,

lots of harsh language and threatening to claim damages against them, I

finally got someone to admit that my DSL wouldn’t be moved to this address

until 28th December; this in spite of the fact that I have a letter from the

KPN, stating that it would be moved on the same day as the telephone.

What crappy service. Cable Internet from UPC is looking more attractive all

the time. UPC’s another large company, however, which I’m sure still has its

fair share of customer service issues. It certainly did a few years ago when I

last dealt with them in a significant way.

In the midst of the telephone adventure, the electrician had also turned up.

He knew exactly what to do and had pulled cable within half an hour from the

point of cable TV entry to the point where the internal house TV cabling

converges. I turned on the portable TV I’d borrowed to test the result of this

work and was delighted to see that the house now had cable TV.

Knowing that cable TV was now a reality — we had been worried that it might

be difficult to realise in this house, because there was some doubt as to

whether there was internal TV cabling — I was now free to upgrade the

service, so I biked over to the UPC shop on the Ceintuurbaan and ordered

digital TV, including their extra channels package. In addition to the BBC1 and BBC2 that we currently enjoy, that will give us BBC3, BBC4 and BBC Prime. It’ll probably take a couple of weeks for the decoder to turn up in the post.

After that, I went to Cambodja City for the first time since moving back to

The Netherlands. Cambodja City used to be my favourite restaurant when I lived

here in the nineties and I knew the owner quite well. The food was still good,

but I discovered that the restaurant had been remodelled and the owner no

longer works there. It’s not clear if she’s even still the owner, part-owner

or whatever. Nothing stays the same.

I then biked back to the old house, where I discovered I had forgotten my

screwdrivers, so I had to bike back to the new house, then back to the old

again.

There, I disassembled our heavy flatscreen TV and lugged it downstairs. I

called to reserve a Greenwheels car, then drove the TV over here in it. I

spent ages sitting in the car at this end, waiting for the rain that had

started after I got underway, to stop. Eventually, I had to give up and use a

blanket to shield the TV while I hauled it inside.

As I went to reassemble things at this end, I realised I had now left my

screwdrivers at the other house, but that wasn’t as annoying, because I had to

go back there anyway to return the car to its spot and return home on the

bike.

Finally, I made it back to the new house, where I put the TV on its motorised

stand and settled down to watch The Sopranos.

Not a bad day in all: the telephone line was successfully moved and we now

have cable TV here; DSL to follow.

Tomorrow morning, bright and early, the alarm people are coming to connect the

alarm to the telephone system. Then, in the afternoon, the guest bed will be

delivered. Apart from that, there should be no-one else coming tomorrow, so

it’s hopefully going to be a relatively quiet day after the chaos of the last

few.

The house seems very big, now that I’m the only one in it. Sarah called to say

that she and Eloïse made it to Providence in one piece.

Thursday 22nd December

Still no DSL.

Somewhat predictably, I had to get up early again today to receive the man

from the alarm company, who was coming to connect the alarm.

He was a little late, but eventually turned up and connected the system to the

telephone line. It’s only a burglar alarm, however, so I’m having his company

send me a quote for putting in some smoke detectors and connecting these to

the alarm system.

In the afternoon, I was woken from an unplanned forty winks on the settee by the delivery of

our guest bed. The guest room now has its most important piece of furniture in

place, so we could, at a push, already receive visitors, but it would be nice

to add a couple more items of furniture first.

With that, the last official visitor to the house for this week has been and

gone. What a long week.

In the afternoon, I took a Greenwheels car down to Media Markt and bought a

Dyson DC08 Animal Pro vacuum-cleaner. I had been planning to get a high-end

Miele, but the Dyson has two major advantages: it doesn’t need bags and its

filters don’t need to be replaced.

After dinner at the old house and another run of stuff to the new house, I was

back home, where I unpacked a bunch of the kitchen boxes. Hurray! We now have

our own cutlery and crockery again! Mugs! Glasses! What more could I want? How about DSL?

Friday 23rd December

Still no DSL. I rang the KPN again to complain. A very nice woman listened to

me vent and then told me she agreed with me, but couldn’t do anything for me.

And you pay 10 cents p/m to hear that. Pathetic.

I prepared our Senseo coffee machine for use today and had my first cup of

coffee from it in our new home. Mmm…

Later in the afternoon, I assembled our new Dyson vacuum-cleaner and gave it a

test drive around the kitchen. Very impressive. The manual for the thing,

however, is atrociously unclear and awkward.

I spent the rest of the day reading the dishwasher’s manual. Let me tell you

how exciting that was. Now I know how to use all of its features. Like our

washing-machine and dryer, it has a timer, so you can schedule it to start at

night, when electricity rates are cheaper.

Dinner with Jo at Cambodja City finished off a completely uneventful day.

Saturday 24th December

Still no DSL.

I treated myself to a Hästens dressing-gown today, as I’d noticed them when we

were looking for a bed. They just looked so cosy and warm that I wanted to be

able to step into one when exiting from the shower in our new bathroom.

In the afternoon, I biked over to Koos and Yvonne’s house, dropping by to

surprise them. I no longer had an e-mail address for Koos, so this seemed like

a good way to get back in touch with him. They were, indeed, quite surprised

to see me. We chatted for a couple of hours about Inter/View, the company

where I had once worked and where Koos and Yvonne both still do work.

At the end of the afternoon, I went to see King Kong with Jo at the Tuschinsky.

I can’t remember the last time I went to the cinema. Three years ago? Maybe

longer. I see more films on planes these days than at the cinema.

It was very a very entertaining film. The special effects were amazing, even

when they didn’t appear realistic. The island’s natives were especially

frightening looking.

The pacing, however, was a little off. The film began very slowly and jerked

around a lot in places. They also skipped from the scene where they drugged

Kong to the opening night of the Kong show in New York. I, for one, was left

wondering how they got Kong off the island and into the hold of the ship,

clearly moored off the island at quite some distance.

Sunday 25th December

Still no DSL.

I went over to Jo’s place to play Settlers of Catan and have dinner. Her

friend, Rose, was there, too.

That’s a fun game. Before we knew it, it was 23:00 and time to go home.

Monday 26th December

Still no DSL.

I wrote a letter to the Immigratie en Naturalisatie Dienst to attest to the

fact that I can financially support my wife.

They sent her a request for further documentation on 21st December and gave

her two weeks to reply. Since, by definition, they’re dealing with foreigners,

you’d think they’d give you more than two weeks over the Christmas period in

which to assemble and return information to them. If I’d got on the same plane

as Sarah, the two week period would have expired and her application for a

residence period would probably have been rejected.

Wankers. This seems like sheer bloody-mindedness to me.

Tuesday 27th December

Still no DSL.

I rang the KPN for the Nth time and politely but very firmly expressed my

utter despair at their total lack of customer-oriented service provision.

My DSL should have worked on 21st December at the new address, but still

doesn’t. No-one has called me to apologise or give me an idea of when it will

work. Even a complaint, registered on the 21st, has not received a response

within the 72 hour period I was told was the maximum term before I could

expect a reaction. Disgraceful.

Phone companies the world over are complete and utter shite, especially those

that are or were at one time a state monopoly.

Why can’t I find a bloody component RGB/YPbPr video cable in this town?

I want to hook up our American DVD player to our European TV. Problem? Three

of our TV’s four video-in channels is for a SCART connector, a standard

unknown in the US, so missing from our DVD player’s video-out options. Our DVD

player offers S-Video, but our TV does not.

In short, the only connection they have in common is for a component RGB/YPbPr cable, but I

can’t find a suitable cable anywhere in Amsterdam. In truth, I have found two

five metre cables, but I need a cable of a metre or less. This is very

annoying. Perhaps I’ll have to buy one in the US next week.

Wednesday 28th December

Still no DSL. Very sad.

It’s freezing cold here now, as it was yesterday. The temperature throughout

the entire country is sub-zero at the moment and I can’t seem to coax the

central heating in this house to get up above 19°C. It’s just not quite

warm enough in the evening and I’m not sure how to fix this, apart from

building a fire in the hearth. I’d really like to be able to do this with

central-heating alone, of course.

More bad news: the delivery of our new car has been delayed. We don’t expect

to have it now until the end of February. It will be manufactured in week six

of 2006.

Thursday 29th December

Still no DSL. Rang the KPN again. Must be at least six times now. Useless.

Hopeless. Worthless.

I finally got our American DVD player up and running this afternoon.

Unfortunately, it’s not all that good at converting an NTSC disc to a PAL

signal; the picture is quite jerky. For that matter, even PAL discs don’t look

as good as they might.

Our TV can display an NTSC signal, so for the time being we’ll just switch the

DVD player to NTSC when we want to watch an NTSC disc. Ultimately, though, I

think we’re going to want to replace this faithful device with something that

does a better job of displaying the large number of American region one NTSC

discs that we have in our collection. Since we have no VCR or TiVo any more,

it would be nice to have a DVR with DVD recording capability, but the need for

a region-free machine restricts our choice.

One thing that is nice is finally being able to see my widescreen DVDs

displayed on a widescreen television.

Friday 30th December

Still no DSL.

I ordered an S-Video + dual RCA to SCART cable today, so that I can connect

our DVD player in a way that will give us better picture quality. The component cable I eventually found wouldn’t work, because our TV expects that to be used in conjunction with digital audio inputs, which our DVD player can’t provide.

After that, I went for a haircut and a shave at the barber. Oliebollen

(literally oil balls, a kind of spherical doughnut, traditionally eaten around

New Year) and coffee.

Finally, I went looking for belated Christmas presents for Eloïse and

Sarah. Well, they don’t know the difference, right? They were in America for

Christmas, so what does it matter that I bought their presents after

Christmas. Eloïse’s I will leave here; Sarah’s I will take with me when I

fly out to Boston tomorrow.

The cleaning company came back to re-shampoo some of the carpets they had

previously done on Tuesday. When they had dried the first time, there were

some large, faint stains, so I wasn’t happy and called the cleaners back in to

redo the job.

It was snowing so hard as I biked home this evening that I was barely able to

keep my eyes open. It’s stopped now, however.

As I mentiond, I fly to Boston tomorrow afternoon. Hopefully, the snow and predicted rain

won’t cause me any major problems. Once in Boston, I have to take the bus to

Providence.