It all started a few days before we left Singapore, with a sudden urge to phone my mother. Registering that our landline phone had been packed for Perth, I asked Roy for his mobile. “No,” he said bluntly. “Use your own. Now that I’ve retired, there’s no company paying the phone bills anymore.”
“But I can’t afford international calls!” I wailed (embarrassingly, in retrospect). “Especially long ones.”
“Neither can I.” Then, it being 11pm and time for a retired gentleman to retire, he went off to bed.
What was to be done? Sulking was unlikely to be effective, especially in the absence of the sulkee. Clearly, the time had come to enter the new age of telecommunications. Hmm… what had Wendy and Blaire said they were using to call us? Something internet-based, cheap enough both for youngsters with mortgages and for struggling pensioners like ourselves… Skype!
Fortunately, though our condo had almost been stripped of furniture, we still had Wi-Fi. A few minutes’ research confirmed that you can use Skype to phone people on their landlines; and that calling them on their smartphone doesn’t mean you have to see each other’s faces. By 1am, I’d not only registered with Skype and bought a modest US$10 credit, but I’d indulged in a 15-minute gabfest with my mother in South Africa on her landline, and with sister Dale in London (16 minutes) on her mobile. After that, I still had $8.12 credit. Result! – as they say (albeit annoyingly).
So far, so good.
In England a week later, with plans to remain for a few months, it was clear that Skype alone wasn’t going to cut the mustard; I really did need a local phone number. Frustrating hours spent trawling the websites of mobile phone networks EE, O2 and Three revealed the utter impossibility of signing up online, unless (a) you had a UK postal code, and (b) your credit or debit card was registered to that postal code. (The computer simply said no.)
So it was more in hope than in expectation that I picked up a Three sim-card off a rack in Sainsbury’s – for the princely sum of a pound – and went through the motions once again on three.co.uk, still sobbing gently. And there it was, right at the bottom of the pesky postal-code-demanding-page: the option of entering a 16-digit number from a voucher that could be bought from most supermarkets, a post office, or just about anywhere.
Three, by the way, costs 3p per minute, 2p per message and 1p per MB of data. Twenty pounds got me fabulously connected, and six weeks later, I still have most of that in credit – especially as most of our communication is internet-based. Why didn’t I do something like this years ago?
Skype on a boat?
Absolutely! Especially since we splashed out (gulp) £1,000 on a five-time signal-booster for Karanja, we’ve had no problems at all – anywhere on the river Thames. It’s been great to have reliable connectivity, especially when I’m doing subbing for Expat Living in Singapore.
Television reception is another story, though. It all works fine in the Thames & Kennet Marina, of course, where we’re surrounded by open sky – but the fancy satellite dish on the deck is thwarted by the nearness of even a single tree, and, to Roy’s despair, just swings around in search mode with annoying uselessness.
Apart from wishing ardently for my husband’s every happiness, I’m secretly rather pleased. One can only watch so many episodes of Grand Designs or Countdown, I feel – and that seems to be all that’s on, ever. And he always has his Kindle.
Always a pleasure to read your posts! Connectivity is a challenge even in Melbourne at times. xx