I never believed, dear reader, in the idea of Mercury being in retrograde. I am not a spiritual person and do not have a belief system. But I did come close this week. And because the tech turnoff was both personal And work related, I think it applies here. I have been having issues with my Kindle charging for about four months now. The charging contact inside the Kindle is damaged and I could only charge it sporadically by jiggling the cable until I saw a light, standing the Kindle up on its side and hoping that it wouldn’t fall over while it charged. Of course, that could not last and it ended quite spectacularly this past Thursday. My Kindle now does not charge at all, no matter what I tried. And I tried everything I could think of: changing cables and changing sockets. No Joy. On the “bright” side Jasper does not have to wrack his brain for a Christmas present for me. But I needed a solution for the inability to read a book.
Not to worry, I thought, I still had my phone. I duly downloaded the Kindle app onto my phone and used it to read, as well as do everything else that I needed to do. Including scheduling appointments, talking to students, and all manner of work related things. And then the unthinkable happened. Not a single one of my non-Apple branded chargers would work with my phone. Not the €27 native union cable, not the cheap six euro HEMA cable, And definitely Not the multi cables that I get from Jasper’s work for free. I could charge nothing. For those of you that don’t know HEMA is a mid-range, house branded department store here in the Netherlands. I spent a very stressed out weekend only using my phone extremely sparingly. But the technology gods seemed to be smiling on me. I ordered five different cables, two from Amazon and three from Apple themselves, to see which ones worked. I don’t think I’ve ever spent more money on cables in my life I think it was something like €115. According to people in the know, Apple recently installed a chip into their phones that is able to detect whether you’re using a Apple branded cable. Now while you don’t have to use an Apple cable itself, it does have to have a particular symbol that indicates it’s compatibility and approval from Apple. I had none of those. Anyhoo, on Saturday afternoon I got a message from DHL saying that a package from Amazon would be arriving on Sunday somewhere between 9 AM and 6 PM. I wasn’t sure which of my packages was arriving As I had placed quite a few orders from Amazon. It turns out that it was the Amazon cables and a couple other things that I ordered. Not only are they Apple branded they’re actually original Apple cables so at least I can use my phone without worrying about charging my phone. But having to turn off my phone after every use was an annoyance that I didn’t need.
Tomorrow, dear reader, is my last day working until 2 January. At least that’s what I hope. The plan is to move Jasper into my house over the next week. But I am not sure that is going to happen. My Jasper is a great idea man. He had the idea to move in with me and then we find a place of our own after selling his. Great idea as I said. Execution, not so much. He has been talking about this move for the last two months. But has done nothing to make it happen. So we will have to see. If he has done nothing by tomorrow, I am going to open up the holidays to teaching. Because frankly, I need the cash.
That’s the second part of my title, I certainly don’t want to work but may have to. So I’m vacillating. Will I or Won’t I is a question that has been in the back of my mind for quite a few days now. And its further complicated by choice. I have also been hired by a company to teach English to French people online. I may just open the holidays to that company and see if I can get some bookings. It doesn’t pay much. It’s about the same as VIPKid but I get paid in euros. Which is important. Because as you all know from a couple of posts ago the dollar has tanked rather spectacularly. Forecasts indicate that it’s going to tank even more over the next few months. So the earning of euros for those of us who are in Europe is going to become doubly important.
Over in the writing world, I have gotten into the Thursday night writing groove. I find that setting a tangible goal for the evening works well for me, as does the fact that there are people typing with me. I think, unlike the English language dinner group, that the writers’ group will survive Covid.
That’s all she wrote for this Inkreadable installment. But stay tuned. As always, there is more to come.
Inkreadable 