I seem to have become a serial blogger, mostly enabled by staying up in the middle of the night with a supply of cheap brandy while Rosie and Sam have adopted a more conventional (and arguably healthy) sleeping timetable. Rosie is thus slightly resentful that I am solely responsible for the depiction of of our lives, and even more so that I am writing down and stealing her jokes, threatening to stop telling them altogether (which I duly noted down and stole for my blog).
We have returned to the city. The last week involved staying in a mountain hut which we had traveled to while simultaneously renting a campsite emplacement and a house in Toulouse as well as owning a house in America, a financial situation which was not particularly sustainable in a month where I don’t yet have a job.
We were then greeted by a huge mobile phone bill from America, which acted as a suitable incentive to attempt to get a French sim card and home internet. This seems to be a relatively advanced level of the French bureaucracy game - requiring bank statements, electricity bills and pre-existing French phone numbers, and only one company provides anything which would sensibly work in the US. But, I’m in the zone now - I got to the last page of the web form which required a 10 Euro payment for the authorization, pulled out my newly minted French debit card...
“votre paiement n'a pas été accepté”
Try again, check details. No.
UK card, US card, 2nd US card. Definitively no.
Exhausting all other options, I pressed the button which sparked fear in the deepest level of my soul.
“Avez-vous besoin d'aide? Nous pouvons vous rappeler” My phone rings, an automated voice in French answers, saying something indecipherable. I pressed random buttons and hoped to magically connected to someone who could read minds.
A woman picked up, said about 5 sentences from which I picked up that this might possibly be a mobile phone company. I sent out a shot in the dark:
“J'essaie de créer un compte sur le site Web, mais ma carte n'a pas été acceptée.”Positive sounding French sounds emerged from the lady, but this was the end point of my ability to speak coherently. From this point, it was a matter of conveying vague concepts - I evidently managed to relate that I needed home internet and a sim card, after which followed a barrage of rapidly spoken terms and conditions.
I felt good. This was still a sensible conversation going vaguely according to the expected plan. I even tried to follow some of the terms of conditions, my self esteem coming to a grinding halt when I realized she’d asked me a question.
Blind panic: “Encore, s'il vous plait?”,
“Votre BIC?”, she said, impatiently.
After a couple of minutes of confusion, it became clear she was asking for my bank details. I was vaguely ready for this, feeling smug as I found the document in a respectable length of time, before realizing in horror that this involved reading out a 27 digit alphanumeric sequence over a lousy phone connection when my only loose knowledge of the French alphabet was a “Bob le train” video we’d watched with Sam.
I started tentatively “Ef, erre, sept....”
She interrupted, brutally, after about 8 letters:
“Y a-t-il quelqu'un dans la maison qui parle français?”.
I pondered, internally, that if if there had been a French person in the house, I wouldn’t have voluntarily elected to make this bloody phone call. But I didn’t know enough French to say that, so I mumbled: “Non, je sais, c'est assez difficile.”.
I detected a moment of connection, where we both realized that we were obligated to get though this now, even though no-one was going to enjoy it. I desperately tried to think of Phonetic French spellings:
“Frederique, errr... Renée...”
We clumsily went through data options and connection speeds, subjects about which I would usually have something intelligent to say - now reduced to an almost desperate “J'ai besoin d'un téléphone qui fonctionne aux États-Unis”.
Reading out my credit card details (numbers are fine... I’m good at numbers), I felt the end was in sight. But 8 digits in, the line went quiet.
“Allo?”
Nothing. I felt a deep panic, the sole gatekeeper of our digital world now lost - I would need to call again and explain everything to another French person.
Still in disbelief, the phone rang, but the 3 levels of call forwarding from my French proxy number prevented me from picking it up in time. I briefly considered whether we actually needed the internet, or whether we could just start some sort of rudimentary farm.
I frantically installed an app on my phone which would bypass the forwarding - and she called again. I answered like a person who had just been reunited with a long lost relative:
“C'est vous! Je suis très heureux!”
I sensed we might have finished the transaction, so I optimistically attempted a “Non c'est tout! Merci beaucoup!”, which was met with agreeable end of phone conversation noises.
I hung up, and stared at the wall and tried not to think about what it’s going to be like to go to work.
We have returned to the city. The last week involved staying in a mountain hut which we had traveled to while simultaneously renting a campsite emplacement and a house in Toulouse as well as owning a house in America, a financial situation which was not particularly sustainable in a month where I don’t yet have a job.
We were then greeted by a huge mobile phone bill from America, which acted as a suitable incentive to attempt to get a French sim card and home internet. This seems to be a relatively advanced level of the French bureaucracy game - requiring bank statements, electricity bills and pre-existing French phone numbers, and only one company provides anything which would sensibly work in the US. But, I’m in the zone now - I got to the last page of the web form which required a 10 Euro payment for the authorization, pulled out my newly minted French debit card...
“votre paiement n'a pas été accepté”
Try again, check details. No.
UK card, US card, 2nd US card. Definitively no.
Exhausting all other options, I pressed the button which sparked fear in the deepest level of my soul.
“Avez-vous besoin d'aide? Nous pouvons vous rappeler” My phone rings, an automated voice in French answers, saying something indecipherable. I pressed random buttons and hoped to magically connected to someone who could read minds.
A woman picked up, said about 5 sentences from which I picked up that this might possibly be a mobile phone company. I sent out a shot in the dark:
“J'essaie de créer un compte sur le site Web, mais ma carte n'a pas été acceptée.”Positive sounding French sounds emerged from the lady, but this was the end point of my ability to speak coherently. From this point, it was a matter of conveying vague concepts - I evidently managed to relate that I needed home internet and a sim card, after which followed a barrage of rapidly spoken terms and conditions.
I felt good. This was still a sensible conversation going vaguely according to the expected plan. I even tried to follow some of the terms of conditions, my self esteem coming to a grinding halt when I realized she’d asked me a question.
Blind panic: “Encore, s'il vous plait?”,
“Votre BIC?”, she said, impatiently.
After a couple of minutes of confusion, it became clear she was asking for my bank details. I was vaguely ready for this, feeling smug as I found the document in a respectable length of time, before realizing in horror that this involved reading out a 27 digit alphanumeric sequence over a lousy phone connection when my only loose knowledge of the French alphabet was a “Bob le train” video we’d watched with Sam.
I started tentatively “Ef, erre, sept....”
She interrupted, brutally, after about 8 letters:
“Y a-t-il quelqu'un dans la maison qui parle français?”.
I pondered, internally, that if if there had been a French person in the house, I wouldn’t have voluntarily elected to make this bloody phone call. But I didn’t know enough French to say that, so I mumbled: “Non, je sais, c'est assez difficile.”.
I detected a moment of connection, where we both realized that we were obligated to get though this now, even though no-one was going to enjoy it. I desperately tried to think of Phonetic French spellings:
“Frederique, errr... Renée...”
We clumsily went through data options and connection speeds, subjects about which I would usually have something intelligent to say - now reduced to an almost desperate “J'ai besoin d'un téléphone qui fonctionne aux États-Unis”.
Reading out my credit card details (numbers are fine... I’m good at numbers), I felt the end was in sight. But 8 digits in, the line went quiet.
“Allo?”
Nothing. I felt a deep panic, the sole gatekeeper of our digital world now lost - I would need to call again and explain everything to another French person.
Still in disbelief, the phone rang, but the 3 levels of call forwarding from my French proxy number prevented me from picking it up in time. I briefly considered whether we actually needed the internet, or whether we could just start some sort of rudimentary farm.
I frantically installed an app on my phone which would bypass the forwarding - and she called again. I answered like a person who had just been reunited with a long lost relative:
“C'est vous! Je suis très heureux!”
I sensed we might have finished the transaction, so I optimistically attempted a “Non c'est tout! Merci beaucoup!”, which was met with agreeable end of phone conversation noises.
I hung up, and stared at the wall and tried not to think about what it’s going to be like to go to work.
We have been keeping up with your posts and love reading about your and Sam's adventures! Rosie should definitely write a post soon!!! We wish you well and look forward to reading more about your experiences.
ReplyDeleteChelsea, Tanae and Robin