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When you engage yourself in a business contract with a services provider, you normally expect certain level of after-sales customer service.
So you sign the contract, pay your monthly fee and start receiving the service that you’re paying for. Pretty much straight forward, right? Like this, you find: gas, electricity, water, telly, internet, telephone, mobile phone, etc. and many other services.
All those companies will try to keep you sweet, happy as Larry, because their job depends on people like you, who pay their monthly fees. So I kind of understand that they will lie to you and try to deceive you in order to keep you happy.
However, what happens when what you pay for is not a continuous service? What happens when you spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on, say, for instance, a brand new house? Would you expect the same care and customer services?
I would.
Am I getting it?
No.
There is nothing structurally wrong with our house. We are in fact very very very happy with it. The only “problems” were a few snags that we noticed from the very beginning. Nothing serious, but annoying. Even before completing on the buy, we wrote a list with these snags, gave it to the Builder who came back with a swift reply saying: “it is not up to the customer to bring up snags, but the site manager will on completion day”.
Ermmm, excuse me? Of course it is up to the customer to bring up snags! Most of them you don’t even notice until you’ve been LIVING in the house!
It doesn’t matter that you send them weekly reminders of these snags for two months, or call them constantly.. no.. they will ignore your emails, or reply with meaningless one-liners, or simply say that there has been a problem with their internet provider and they haven’t even received your emails.
So what is the problem? The problem is that once you’ve bought the house, once you have given them your hundreds of thousands of pounds, they don’t care. They have your money, they can move on to another sale and forget about you.
They don’t care any more!
Another Jehova’s witness who refuses medical help
Joshua McAuley, 15, was airlifted to hospital from the incident in Smethwick, West Midlands, on Saturday morning, but died later that day.
I think that a lot of time and contributor’s money could have been saved if this boy had refused to any help-full-stop after the accident. How are the doctors meant to help him if he won’t even accept a single blood transfusion?
I wonder if anybody else died waiting for the emergency services to turn up whilst they were “trying to save” this boy….
The allegations included a claim that Spain and Russia, rival bidders for the 2018 World Cup, were conspiring to bribe referees at next month’s finals in South Africa as part of efforts to win the right to host the tournament.
And the problem is that I totally believe that Spain were trying to bribe referees and any other “accusations” made against them! Sadly, Spain is known to be a bit dodgy in that respect 
Corruption in Spain? Unfortunately, a common thing…
In the original storyline for The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, Depp was due to play a 21st-century advertising executive who travels back in time to 17th-century Spain, where he meets Quixote and becomes involved in his adventures
Time travelling? WTF! No, definetely, the whole “fantastic” world of Don Quijote can be interpreted in many a different way!
I think I may have talked about this in the past (I’m not sure, and I’m not going to start looking in my blog archive… Can’t be bothered right now…)
Well, the thing is that I learnt to drive in the UK. Back in Spain I had never driven. Furthermore, I never had the need to drive. Living in a small town where the furthest distance is a 30-45 minute walk, you have to be really lazy to feel the need of a car. But I must admit that everything was a stone’s throw away and I was young and full of energy, so walking was not something too crazy to venture into.
Britain is so different. Due to the “horizontal” build of towns (compared to the “vertical” build in Spain – mostly blocks of flats) distances are much greater, and you really need a car to go anywhere. In Byfleet we had lots of local amenities (well, “lots“: a pub, a couple of shops and several restaurants) and we were even able to walk to work if we felt like it. However, we’ve now lost this “locality” and we use the car for everything: journey to/fro work, go to the shops, go anywhere in Basingstoke – as our house is in the middle of a house estate without any amenities…
So we are using my car a lot. Jon’s car, bless him, is not very fuel efficient so we try to use it in special occassions only. We use my poor little micra for everything else.
I am not going to talk about the obscene amount of money I spend on petrol, because it’s Friday and I don’t want to ruin my weekend early with ill-thoughts… I am going to talk about the hidden “Spanish driver” in me 
As I said, I learnt to drive in the UK and I never used a car in Spain. However, I’ve been in many cars in Spain in my life and something about the way of driving there must have stuck in my brain. Yes, it definetely stuck, as I am now, officially, a Spanish driver in the UK.
I get road rage, I shout & swear at other drivers, I use my elbows, I tailgate, I cut people off… The next thing will be tooting! THAT will be the final manifestation of the hidden Spanish driver in me.
I never used to get road rage before. I have only started to notice it in the last couple of weeks. I want to blame it on the stupid rush hour traffic that we’ve been hitting in the last couple of weeks. This morning traffic was awesome on the way to work and only took us the normal 45 minutes, and I could feel so much happier. When we hit the morning traffic and it takes us +1 hour to get to work, I am always in a much fouler mood.
The plus side is that my normal and motorway driving have greatly improved since we moved to Basingstoke. Now I’m very comfortable doing 80mph in the motorway, I regularly use the outside lane to overtake, etc. Also, I have realised how much I enjoy driving (despite the occassional road rage). Actually, I realised this a while ago. The rush hours and the road rages haven’t put me off driving and I still enjoy it.
Enjoy this classic by Catatonia and have a great weekend!
Earlier last week the managing director of my company approached me and asked me if I could help with something important. He told me what the situation was and made me a proposal.
The situation.
The very first KNX International Forum was taking place in Madrid that week. Due to unforeseen circumstances, the CEO of our company -who originally was the one to attend- had to cancel and our managing director was going to attend in his place. Due to even more unforeseen circumstances, the managing director could not attend either. Apparently, anyone else was simply too busy to even think about going.
The proposal.
The proposal was that I did go and make the presentation on behalf of the company. Why me? Apparently, the main reason why they chose me is because I am Spanish!
Hell!
My first reaction was “Thanks, but no thanks” (actually, it was also more like “No fucking chance“) but after speaking for a while with our managing director, I kind of changed my mind. On one side, I felt I didn’t want to let the company down, and on the other, I thought it was the opportunity that I had been waiting for to do a bit of geeky KNX networking myself.
This proposal brought up the eternal dichotomy in me: I am an extrovert but I am also very introvert. I am cheeky and I am shy. I am talkative and I am quiet. I want to believe that I think positive, but sometimes I am negative. I kept thinking that the negative side of me would take over and that made me nervous. Very nervous.
But then I thought: Come on. You’re 32 years old now. You’re not a little girl any more. You don’t need anyone by you all the time holding your hand. Be strong, be brave.
My conditions to accept this proposal were two:
- I wanted to go as late as possible (I landed at 7pm) and I wanted to be back as soon as possible too (I was back in Barajas by 1pm the following day)
- The presentation had to be done in English. There was no way I was to talk about KNX for half an hour in Spanish. No chance.
My conditions were accepted and a few hours later I was on a plane to Madrid!
This has been the very first time that I have been to Spain in a no-holiday situation. Since I left for the UK, I’ve only been back “home” for holidays and little breaks to see friends. I’ve been to Malaga, Motril, Granada, Alicante, Valencia, Lanzarote and Gran Canaria, and every time I went there I was in holiday mood. This time, however, I felt different. I felt like an important business woman in an important mission. I was looking back at my own country with different eyes, I was noticing different and exciting things.
The expercience was unique and really positive. I did my geeky networking around, I met some interesting people, I learnt a few things about speaking in public and everybody congratulated me after I had delivered my speech.
Now it’s done I can say: Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. However I am not completely sure that I want to see myself in that same spot any time soon.
Many things have happened in the last few days. I still have no (decent) internet connection at home so I struggle to find the time to maintain the blog updated. Working on the house takes up most of my time…
So I thought I’d write one of those blog entries where I mention many things but don’t talk about anything in particular or in detail.
You are now leaving Surrey
My first impressions about the move from Surrey to Hampshire.
- Council tax in Byfleet was £1,295 a year for a two bed maissonette with barely any grounds. In Basingstoke we pay £1,365 for a three bed fully detached house with garden twice the size and a huge garage. That is £5.8 extra a month. Sounds like a great deal to me!
- Basingstoke and Deane Council are collecting our black bins every week, rather than fortnightly. Very handy, especially when you’ve just moved and are generating tons of crap for the first few weeks.
- Basingstoke people are not Surrey people. And you will only understand this statement if you’ve lived in Surrey…
- The road system that I already mention the other day is way better than any roads I’ve ever driven around Surrey. More double carriageways and better looked after (except the potholes in my neighbourhood/building site)
- The shops in Festival Place open until 8pm every working day. They only open until 8 on Thursdays in the Peacocks centre in Woking or the Guildford one…
I survived my day trip to Madrid
A few notes that I wrote down on my “lightining visit” to Madrid last week: (I will write a bit more in detail about this “episode” in a day or two)
- Men are still wearing tons of hair gel in the old-school-posh “repeinado” style and are wearing their jumpers over their shoulders. (I’m really struggling to find a photo that represents this, which I find amazing because there are soooo many men with that style in Spain!)
- People are still smoking too much… everywhere… even inside the airports!
- Huge publicity banners and posters everywhere, especially by the side of major roads, where I thought they had got forbidden a few years ago because they are distracting to drivers…
- Impressed about the amount of detached and terraced houses that could be seen in the outskirts of Madrid (I always explain to everybody that 90% of “houses” in Spain are flats, but I think I’m going to have to start changing that figure to at least 75%, as they are building more and more houses -unifamiliares-)
- How green every thing looks from the airplane, although I must say that it is a different shade of green. In the UK you find a more yellowish-green, whereas in Spain the shade is darker (of course, it is due to the very different vegetation)
- Women generally smell gorgeous (they make an effort to look clean and elegant)
- The horrible English language/accent that the Iberia flight attendants speak (now that BA and Iberia have merged, I hope that the company forces them to improve their level). I really struggled to understand a word they were saying, and I really believe that native English did too.
Other general stuff maybe worth mentioning (or maybe not):
- I don’t like Chris Moyles very much. I miss Scott Mills in the mornings (I also don’t find him “that” funny in the afternoons. I thought he was better at 7am)
- The house is looking great, although I am still panicking about the huge amount of boxes still left in storage that we have to take home with us and try to find a place for.
- The shop attendants at Paul Simon in Byfleet seem to be retarded. All of them. Three times we’ve been there ordering/collecting curtains and all three times we’ve been served by someone who is clearly missing some important neurons in their brain. Shocking.
- Traffic has started getting worse in the mornings. And the journey home->work is averaging 1 hour now, instead of 45 minutes. Let’s hope it doesn’t get worse than that, otherwise I’ll have to start stealing petrol somewhere…
- I need to dye my hair and have it cut too. I simply don’t have the time and the increasing amount of grey hairs in my head aren’t doing me any favours.
- In the last few weeks something very weird has been happening to me. We don’t have a dishwasher yet (actually, hopefully Jon will be installing it today if it gets delivered in time) and I’ve been doing the washing up by hand. The thing is that when I start washing up, all these weird old memories keep coming up in my head. I think of people that I had almost forgotten, situations that happened a long time ago and had been buried in the “not worth remembering” side of my brain. And I can’t find an explanation to this “phenomenon”. I have no idea what has triggered all these old memories. The funny thing is that almost 95% of the time that this happens it’s whilst I’m doing the washing up, which is something that I have never done on a regular basis for different reasons (in the family home my mum would do the washing, at Uni I was in not-self-catered-Halls, then the last three years we’ve had a dishwasher…) so I can’t associate the fact of “doing the washing up” with all those people/situations… Very weird and it’s doing my head in…
- My new favourite “fashion” programme is Project Runway. With Sky+ I can record all programmes that I like. I just happened to watch the first episode of Season 3 on Sky one day and I loved it, so I set the whole series to record. And now I am hooked! Season 4 has just begun and of course I am recording it as well!
