A Waiting Game

On Tuesday Favio presented to me, for signing, a document written in Spanish Gobbledegook. It was something to do with his Accountant and a sum of 80odd Euros that required paying. I presumed, as I signed, that I owed the money to the accountant for "services rendered" during my contract period (which was not beyond the bounds of possibility) but when I handed his copy back to him 80odd euros came across the bar to me! A windfall. And a nice one at that. He asked about the situation with the Social Security problem and all that I could tell him was that I was waiting for a decision from them. I know that I gripe and groan about him at times but I have to give him his due...he's been making his own enquiries on my behalf unbeknown to me and it seems that my case remains pending. I am happier with my lot though because he also said that he cannot renew the work contract until at least there is an "amnistia" (amnesty) granted by them in respect of the block on my Bank Account because he has to pay directly into such an account in order to keep the authorities happy. Anti Black Market rules I guess because Bank Accounts are totally transparent to all who need to know here in Spain. Ann was in at the time and helped me talk to him about the matter, my Spanish being stretched beyond my capabilities, and through her he suggested going directly to the SocSec office with all my papers and asking about an "amnistia" etc. but then decided that that was probably not such a good idea because no-one there would be able to speak English in all probability and I wouldn't have sufficient Spanish to cope. As for the time being taken; he suggested that the current economic crisis and the extra workload that would be giving them is keeping my case low down on their agenda.

The windfall has been used to take advantage of those Laptop offers up in town and on Friday I collect a tiny, weeny 7" screen Netbook with Windows XP, WiFi, and a networking connection. I was lucky though. When I walked into the shop I noticed the ads had been crossed "sold out" but the chap made a phonecall and managed to find what I wanted (no contract with vodaphone or anyone else) in another branch, so now I can get my Skype-phone back online at long last. Having said that, yesterday my broadband connection was very unstable through the day and this morning I've noticed it's dropping on a regular basis again. Through the night it's fine so I don't quite know what's going on with it. I'm not taking any chances with the connection though, I've written this offline rather than directly here but now, of course, I've got to upload it so where's the "select all" and then "copy" commands in this Linux version of Notepad? Ah, yes, here goes nothing............

Live now! Y'know, this old HP Omnibook Laptop that Austen gave me years ago soldiers on. It's got a processor slower than a hand-whisk, minimal ram, a key missing (in the top row, f12, not important) and a Hard Drive with more bad sectors than good'uns but runs a LiveCD version of the OpenSUSE Linux distro as if it's childsplay.

Seems we are in for a wet weekend. Yesterday Cristina had the communal areas thoroughly cleaned, ridding them at last of all the builders muck so I'm hoping life can get back to normal noise and grimewise. Today, a good mop and dusting through here and stuff all the rugs, and my slippers, in the washing machine to wash and dry before the heavens open.