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Well truly, the title and feeling are not quite right for now but it's the main reason for this post.  Thanks to Telkom (bunch of w@%$ers) I've pretty much been offline since the afternoon of 27 Feb - today was my first day back with access because it's a new month and everything 'resets'.  Starting from the beginning, ADSL here is expensive mainly because Telkom have a monopoly on the telephone things and they charge what they want.  Several people don't even bother with landlines because of that and rely solely on mobile phones.  It is also slow (though they don't think so) and very unreliable at times.  Facts to back this up are... it costs us per month here what we were paying per quarter in the UK for a 10th of the access (3GB as opposed to 30GB) plus they charge you for your phone line and the ADSL line, even though it's only one line!; they can barely manage 1MB here when were were on 4MB in the UK and heading to 8MB speed; even though you are supposed to be connected all the time with ADSL, there are times you just cannot get on.

Anyway, we reached our monthly limit on the afternoon of 27 Feb.  As there were a couple more days to go in the month, I decided we needed to buy a top up gig which you can do online... well, you could if it was working - which it wasn't.  So, had to buy it on the phone which meant I was given a new user name and password temporarily to access this extra space but the person on the phone couldn't tell me how to do this, I had to speak to someone in the technical department.  Hmm, I wondered, are those the same technical experts who run the site and can't make sure that you can top up online towards the end of a month?

To cut a long story short... a very long time on hold, several phone calls, cut off a couple of times, technical not being able to make this user name and password work, sales being unhelpful again, someone else in technical giving us instructions that screwed with our machine... in total FIVE HOURS on the phone and the upshot was we couldn't get the new user name and password to work - and now the old one wasn't working either.  R had some very interesting things to say to the technical 'expert' on the phone!  I finally got our proper user name and password to be accepted and we've been holding our breath until this morning, hoping that everything would reset, which thankfully it has.  To add insult to injury, we had to remember to call them yesterday to tell them to cancel the extra gig for next month or we'd automatically be allocated it and charged! Grrr.

So, I've not been a happy bunny.  One of the things we checked before moving here was broadband/ADSL access - R actually asked my dad about it and said, "if you don't, she won't move!"  There were other things that we should have really checked out before moving here but that's another post for another time.  Not having access to the real internet (ie sites outside of South Africa) has just been horrible.  Not only could I not go to my favourite places, I couldn't talk to my friends on messenger, couldn't call them on Skype, couldn't access my email on Gmail and couldn't do anything for our hobby business or other bits of work as they need to be accessed online!  Add to that the fact that we wanted to book bits for the holiday but couldn't and the things just pile up on you.  All of this may seem very melodramatic but it brought so many frustrations and disappointments to the fore that I have to say that it was some of the worst time we've had here.  Decisions are going to have to be made and I'm sure they will appear in here as and when.  I said in the last entry that things would wear me down soon enough though I'd rather have been proved wrong about that...

Film:  haven't really watched anything recently.  Have to admit though, two of my favourite tv programmes are back on this weekend - Supernatural and Dexter.  I'm going to try not to miss those so I don't end up with loads of them on tape and having to catch up... or trying to catch up and just not succeeding!  So much to do, so little time!

Books:  Finished Velocity.  Hmm.  Not much to say really, disappointed, all a bit pat for my liking, tried for the twist ending but I'd seen that coming and the 'ordinary hero', well, he despatched the baddies far too easily for me.  Sorry, Mr Koontz, not your best but that's just my opinion.  Now I have a confession... I have read a lot, R built me a library in the attic of our old house to take the books that I had read - some of which didn't look read because I'm so careful with them (the main reason why I won't lend out my books) - and downstairs I had a bookshelf filled with those I had yet to read.  I'm an avid book buyer as well as reader, so there are a lot of things on that shelf but the stack is going down because books are so damned expensive over here that I just don't buy that many anymore and that's another frustration over here!  Things that we like - books, games, films/dvds are really expensive.  Books, well, it works out cheaper to buy from Amazon UK, pay for the shipping and duty into the country than to buy books over here!  There are exceptions as there are some good cut price bookshops but they don't always have what I want or need.  So, the confession is that I have stacks to read and what I read isn't necessarily that new but rather what grabs me at the time I choose my new tome.  So, my current pick is The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger.  I bought it ages ago, when it first appeared in paperback, from Amazon actually and it's sat on the shelf waiting to be chosen.  Okay, I admit, one reason I'm reading it now is before the film comes out because sometimes I like to see what they get right, what they get wrong and what they just change (eg Neil Gaiman's Stardust).  I'll leave commenting about it until I'm a bit further in...

Stitching: finishing the RR piece and then moving on to finish the two birth samplers. I'm also sorting out patterns and materials for my really good friend L who visited me recently and who I taught to stitch when she was here.  I actually stitched her a piece as a gift a few years back before we left the UK as a little something to remember me by before we moved.  I can't believe that she's stitching now and actually enjoying it, which is great.  I've actually taught half a dozen people to stitch since I moved here which is nice and eventually I'd like to have a stitching group here as I did back in the UK.  People are always surprised when they find out I stitch.  They tell me that I don't look like 'the type', though when questioned, they can't actually tell me what 'the type' is.

Music:  been sorting out my iTunes categories and looking at putting some of my vinyl onto CD, then onto iTunes and ultimately my iPod - especially for the California road trip... next month, oh my, it will be next month!  Wow!  The only vinyl album I've put onto iTunes at the moment is Colourbox by Colourbox and I transferred this ages ago but I've listened to it a few times over the past few days while I've been working and I still love it, still believe it was ahead of its time - a true classic of the 80s.

Holiday: so far we've booked flights there and back with our stop in London on the way back to catch up with people; booked the flight from San Diego to Las Vegas; the hotel in Vegas; and the Grand Canyon trip.  Now that the internet is back at our fingertips, we can book the rest soon!

Well, time to end another long entry...

For some reason today I've had flashes of pictures from back home storm into my mind, mostly when I've been trying to concentrate on some particularly boring piece of work (always the way).  Thing is, they're not even images of my favourite things (ok, Bluewater was in there somewhere) but mainly they've been silly things - Waitrose (I miss decent supermarkets of all things!), my road (but not the end that I lived in), my high street, workplace and strangely enough, images of Chicago where I went on a business trip with a colleague and friend.  So, go figure!

So, I think that it's been one of those days when I've been bored and bits of my mind have been wandering off unsupervised - very dangerous according to R who says I think too much and too deeply anyway.  I never really think I'm homesick as I do realise that all the things that pushed me from the UK are still there and I would probably get frustrated being back there... but sometimes... it just seems like "there's no place like home", and what I wouldn't do for a pair of ruby slippers or a time machine!  Strangely enough, the only time I am really homesick is if I listen to Virgin Radio online and then it's not the programmes or the music, it's the adverts that get to me!  Maybe it's the mundane, maybe it's the accents, I don't know.

Maybe I need this trip back to the UK more than I realise, maybe I need a fix or to just get it out of my system for a while.  As I'm feeling a bit blue about it, the things that get to me here get to me even more.  The one that's frustrating me at the moment is how long it takes for films to be released over here and how some things never make it into the cinema at all!  Some of the stuff out here at the moment or due out soon are already on DVD elsewhere in the world.  At least going to the movies is cheaper than in the UK but I'll still be adding to the DVD collection with films that I've never seen on the big screen and I'll be buying them online because the versions over here are quite often lame, just the film with no extras or whatever.  I'm going to make a list of the films that I'm looking forward to seeing this year and I'll put it on here sometime.  Such a shame that Premiere is no longer in publication - I'd subscribed to that magazine for years and read it for even longer.  I know it's online but it's just not the same, I mean, you can't read online in the bath!

Film: last film seen - about half of The Black Dahlia this evening but just couldn't get into it, despite Aaron Eckhart being in it (I think he's great and I loved him in Thank You For Smoking).  I kept thinking LA Confidential was much better, even though it was fiction - and it had Kevin Spacey in it!

Books:  same as before, though I have to admit to getting a bit bored with Velocity.  I've read so many of the Koontz books but in the end stopped as I found them a bit formulaic.  Don't get me wrong, I think he's written some amazing stories - Watchers, Lightning (can't understand why this has never been filmed), Mr Murder, Sole Survivor, Cold Fire, Tick Tock - with some strong female characters and I would have loved to have written any one of them.   Maybe that's what this book is lacking for me, strong female presence but I'm just not really into it.  I'll finish it because I may as well and I've only ever really given up on one book in my reading lifetime.

Stitching: same but not really done any since the last entry.  Was going to do some tonight when watching Grey's Anatomy (one of my current TV addictions) but ended up snuggled on the sofa with R instead, which is always time well spent.