R2BC - Hi Tech

Goodbye old TV

Here are my highly technical, digital, and magical (well it's magic to us) Reasons 2B Cheerful this week. The R2BC linky is over at Mich's Mummy from the Heart.

1
Internet And Waste Of Time
I was paying far too much for my internet because it was a package arranged a few years ago which I'd never updated. So I spent about two hours talking (well waiting and talking) on the phone to one company who offered me a good deal. I was already using their router so they told me to call the other company who was providing my internet and cancel it. The other company would apparently inform them and then they'd take over.

So I called Company 2, who I'm already with, and of course they had a better deal for me. So I went with it. They arranged to send me a new router at a very inconvenient time but we fixed it so that the fed-ex guy would meet me at my college. That went smoothly.

Then Company 1 called to ask why I wasn't going with them after all. I said I preferred the deal at Company 2. "How much are you paying there?" "None of your business. And it's not just the money, it's the content of the package." Seriously, if they couldn't give me their best deal after two hours on the phone the day before, I wasn't interested in a sudden new deal only available after you sign up with another company. So she said I had to return their router to the office near the Central Bus Station.

Next day after school I made the significantly out of my way trip to the office near the Central Bus Station with the old router, only to be told that it was mine so I didn't need to return it. I remembered that they'd charged me for it years ago but I assumed that I was being charged for the previous router which I never returned. (Because I didn't know I had to until I noticed that I'd been charged £4 a month for over a year to pay for it.) Turns out, they were charging me for the new router.

It's all double work to get anything done here. But I had my new router and connected to it with no problem. Although we couldn't understand why DD's computer wouldn't connect to our new internet. Luckily she'd been upstairs to a neighbour with her laptop and the neighbour had put in her own wifi for DD and never deleted her password. That might be stealing but DD was given it and we only used it for a couple of days with the intent of sorting out our own internet issues asap.

And after all that, I'm saving about £10 a month.

2
Smart And Not So Smart
I finally bought a smart TV. I spent a silly amount of time worrying about how I was going to get it home (in a taxi of course) and up the stairs (no clue). In fact I put off buying it by several weeks for this reason. In the end I couldn't put it off any longer as I'd been promising DD that we would get it. I thought I'd have to buy the smallest tv in order to manage it. I don't know what happened to me that the obvious thing, to get it delivered, just eluded me. Of course you get it delivered. I think it was because the last thing I bought in that shop was a vacuum cleaner and, though it wasn't heavy, it was a hassle getting the bulky box home in a taxi and up the three flights of stairs.

Anyway, I chose a bigger TV than I'd originally planned to buy because, if you're already going for a cinematic experience, it's a shame to have a piddly little tv. It's 40" but the living room is only 3 metres across so that's like a giant screen if you live in a big house. I paid, in 10 installments which makes it practically free, and they said they'd deliver that same day between 2 and 3pm. It was Friday and I got a call from the delivery man asking if he could come earlier because it was an early Shabbat (an hour before sundown at just after 4pm).

Hanoch (That's Enoch in Hebrew) arrived with the TV at 12.45 and set it all up for me. Turns out I wasn't even connected to my new internet. (I was using the ethernet - what is that even? I've never heard of it before.) Hanoch called Company 2 for me and got me all sorted out with a new user name and password. He was great. I didn't even mind that I had to look at half his bare bottom as he bent down to fix the legs onto the TV. A cracking experience ;)

3
Netflix
We signed up for Netflix. A friend showed me some of the programme and movie options a few weeks ago and if it was only for me, I'd have gone for the BBC Movies and UK TV package. However, DD has friends who don't know English well enough to watch movies without subtitles. Netflix has everything subtitled in Hebrew and some of the children's films are even dubbed in Hebrew. (How annoying is that? It brought back memories of watching the badly dubbed Bel and Sebastion on TV when I was a child.)

It's pure magic. The only downer is that I can't figure out how to change all the movie descriptions to English. I'm not sure it's even possible. And I don't think we're getting to see the full range of entertainment on offer. I'm going to have to explore it a bit more.

Cost of Netflix: about £10 a month.

4
My Baby Laptop
As a bonus item this week, my baby laptop was resurrected. About two years ago I bought myself a small laptop that I could take with me to work and other places if I needed to work outside the house. It's a lovely little laptop - same as my main computer just in miniature. Then DD's tablet broke and my old laptop (the one before my regular laptop) was rubbish to use. DD was distraught and I finally gave in and let her use my new baby laptop. It was less than six weeks old! And suddenly it didn't work. There was a light  behind the screen but nobody was home inside.

DD swore to me that it just stopped. I was heartbroken. I kept meaning to take it to get fixed. It was under guarantee in the UK as I'd bought it when we were in London, but the contract specifically said that the guarantee is void if you take it abroad. And anyway, we weren't in London, we were in Jerusalem. I couldn't deal with it so I just put it away in the cupboard.

Luckily I didn't declutter it as DD admitted to me a couple of weeks ago, that she'd actually spilt water on it and that's why it broke. She was too scared to tell me at the time because she thought I'd go mental. Which of course I would have done. But I'd also have seen if it it could be dried out instead of just putting it away.

This week I got out my baby laptop and it works! In fact I'm using it now. So that's £100 I didn't spend getting it fixed. Hooray! And a laptop for taking to work which I was sorely missing and causing me to waste loads of usable time whilst, e.g. waiting for DD at gymnastics twice a week and during three free periods in a row at school on Thursdays.

5
Facebook Marketplace
On Friday afternoon I put on facebook that I had a 10 year old TV and DVD player to give away. On Saturday evening my friend's son came to pick them up. DD and I quickly went through our DVDs and gave her a bag of about 30 that we don't need anymore. We kept about 10 favourites that we can watch on our laptops (not the baby laptop) but I think even these are on Netflix or some other streaming website.

So that's another empty drawer in the living room, one sleek TV instead of a little tv and DVD player on the side, and a plate of biscuits that my friend sent with her son as a thank you.

All in all, a very technically satisfying week.

Update: I ate all the biscuits so now I hate myself.

Whatever Happened To Baby Jane Is Not Entertainment

A selfie at Tel Aviv Airport before we left. 

We have been suffering from Jet Lag since arriving home last week. This is totally unnecessary when only travelling through two  time zones but as usual, I messed up.

I get drawn into a personal challenge when booking EasyJet flights. I have to try to get the price down to the cheapest I can within our possible dates for travelling. We only take hand luggage. That may change next time as I'm fed up of having to leave stuff at my Mum's to bring home next time and that scary moment of will it? - won't it? fit into the checking frame. We don't choose our seats, or do speedy boarding, or pay to carry an extra purse onto the plane. And I cannot resist those early morning and late night flights that are tuppence hapenny cheaper.

It's a false economy because we arrive in Luton around midnight and have to leave Stanmore for the return journey at 4 am - both journeys requiring a minicab which swallows the full savings we made on the flights. And still I find myself doing it.

There are advantages to these anti-social flight times. For example, Deeds (that's DD, I nicknamed DD after almost seven years) sleeps on the plane, you get an almost full working day before you leave, and you arrive home in the afternoon with time to get yourself organised to go back to work the next day. The only horrible bit is getting up at 3 am to leave for the airport.

This time I decided to stay up and not have that awful having to drag myself out of bed. Whatever Happened To Baby Jane was on television at 10.30 and not finishing until 12.45. I remember seeing it about 40 years ago but couldn't remember any of the details - except that one sister was in a wheelchair and the other one hates her. Mum and I watched it while playing kalooki and trying to second guess what happened next. Mum only remembered the budgie, I thought I remembered the wheelchair being thrown down the stairs or someone falling down them, but I was wrong.

Through the mirrored ceiling at Luton Airport.
I have a red bag at my feet and I'm looking up.
(Or don't bother trying to find me and just read on.)

OMG. What a depressing film. It's hard enough having to leave all the festivities of Christmas and travel back to Nochristmasland on Christmas Eve. And staying up all night has not had any magic attached to it since I was 21. By the time the film ended I was thoroughly miserable. (I admit that there was a good little twist in the tale/tail.) We had to have another match of kalooki while watching Escape to the Country in order to cheer ourselves up.

We slept on the plane. Landed in Tel Aviv at 14.30. Arrived home in Jerusalem at 17.00. (We took a shared mini-bus taxi and had to go round the whole city while eight other passengers were dropped off before us. It costs 25GBP whereas a private taxi costs 70GBP, which is why we do it.) And then we were home and not at all tired. So we went to bed late and couldn't get up in the morning.

This has continued all week because Deeds keeps falling asleep on the sofa around 5 pm and waking up at 7.30. I have been catching up on work that I didn't do while away so I've also been going to bed extremely late. In a spectacular finale, we both fell asleep at 3.30pm this afternoon and woke up at 8. We're screwed. Tomorrow night we're getting into bed at 8 whether we're tired or not, and no napping during the day!

Bedknobs & Broomsticks Revisited

Welcome Angela, it's been so long, apart from Murder She Wrote of course.

Last night DD and I watched Bedknobs And Broomsticks on dvd. She's very funny in that we saw a film we liked on Saturday night and she only wanted to watch the same film again. She has a hard time believing that anything could be better than or as enjoyable as what she already knows. I, on the other hand, know of a few more films than she does and I refused to sit through the same film again.

We are on a movie quest to find something DD loves as much as The Last Mimzy. We have the dvd of this but it doesn't work. We lent it to a friend and it came back 'wiped clean', or so it seems. Probably the FBI destroying the evidence. 

Last Monday night we watched Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Wednesday night we watched The Lion. The Witch, and The wardrobe and on Saturday night we watched Mrs Peregrine's Children. I wanted to watch Escape to Witch Mountain last night but I couldn't get it. Then I hit upon Bedknobs and Broomsticks, which we did manage to get on dvd. 

B&B came out in 1971. I first saw it in Edinburgh in the summer of 1972, or 3, or 4, 5. I seem to remember that I was 12 which would have been 1975, but maybe I was only 9 in 1972? The film was released in the UK in October 1971 and I also remember it being quite a new film so maybe it was in 1972. 

We were on holiday in our caravan. We'd seen the Edinburgh Tattoo and the parade for the start of the Edinburgh Festival. We'd been to dinner with a cousin who was living in Edinburgh at the time. I remember the pink and white drop-waist dress I wore and that I read my cousin's three year old son a bedtime story. Then she asked if we didn't mind that we kids, (my sister, brother and I) sat on a separate children's table for dinner while the four grown-ups sat at the dining room table. I minded very much but of course I said I didn't. That feels like being 12. 

We toured Scotland a bit. I remember going to Oban and possibly the Isle of Skye - or maybe we didn't go over to Sky but just sang the song as we motored across country. I remember talk of getting to the Highlands where there are tropical gardens. I was eager for this as I'd never been anywhere where there were palm trees. I was thinking in terms of Brazilian rainforests and Hawaian beaches, LOL. Anyway we didn't make it that far north and I've always wondered about those tropics in Scotland. FYI, I googled it and it's call Inverewe. 

I feel cheated that I missed that whole evacuation thing. 

So back to Edinburgh and it was pouring with rain. My parents decided to kill the afternoon by taking us to see Bedknobs and Broomsticks. This was a huge concession - we never went to the cinema while on holiday, only at Christmas. It must have been the second or third or fourth.... day of rain. I remember my Dad queuing up for tickets while we sat in a cafe across the road and drank hot chocolate. The queue went around the corner - every tourist family in Edinburgh for the festival must have had the same idea. 

I don't think I've watched the whole film through from beginning to end since that rainy day in Edinburgh 42 (or 45) years ago. I certainly didn't remember all of it. DD loved it. "You see? I know some good films, you have to trust me."

I'd love to show her The Railway Children but we need to read the book first. So, on that premis, we can watch Heidi. I'm trying to think of other films from my childhood that I loved. When the heat is in the mid-30s (that's high 90s in old money) every night is movie night. 

Like Stars On Earth

At age six you expect and hope that your child will learn to read. 

My fifth graders were taken to the library to watch a film today. As it ran over their English lesson I went too. It's an Indian film called Taare Zameen Par. We show it in the original Hindi with Hebrew subtitles. In Hebrew it's called Kochavim Al Pnei Ha'adama (Stars on the Face of the Earth). In the English version it's called Like Stars On Earth. Both versions are on You Tube.

About five minutes into the film I find myself tearing up. By the end of the first half hour I'm sobbing. At one hour all the children are laughing at me as I try to mop up my face with a disintegrating tissue.

During the break (it's 2 hours 42 minutes long) one sweet girl came to me and said, "Hamorah Rachel (Teacher Rachel), I've seen the end before and it's going to be okay."

A lot of the film is in English even in the Hindi version. I can follow the Hebrew subtitles enough to get the gist of what's going on. However, I came home, found it in English, and watched the whole thing again.

The film is about an eight year old boy with dyslexia. In our school they show it to all the fifth grade every year. Personally, I think every teacher should see it. And every parent. Every child who has dyslexia and/or any other learning difficulty and every child who doesn't but who has friends should see this film. Anyone who works with children or who knows children would do well to see it. Have I covered everyone yet? If not, all those not mentioned above should definitely watch this film.

Taare Zameen Par, Like Stars on Earth, Kochavim Al Pnei Ha'adama. Whatever your language, please watch this film.