Light and Dark
Everything is back to normal today after our internet issue yesterday. We’ve even found the reason for it, we think. It seems Ote, or Cosmote as it is now, have started sending bills via text to cut out the paper, and that’s fine by me. Except, we didn’t know that’s what they were doing and hadn’t seen any warning. Thus, we hadn’t told them of Neil’s new phone number and, I am guessing, they sent the bills to the old mobile which is redundant. Still, after a quick phone call to 13888… (press nine for English, ask, fluently in Greek if we might have this conversation in English as it could become technical, and then wait while the assistant arranges, in Greek, for someone who can speak English to call you back. Alternatively, learn to speak Greek)… the internet was restored within a few minutes and thanks to Alpha online banking, the bills were paid while the conversation was going on.
And that’s the next thing. The bank app on the phone requires your fingerprint to open, so you have to set your phone to recognise fingerprints; no problem there. But then, when next turning the phone on, I find it now requires my pin number. Okay, so we’ll do that, and all is well… Until the next time when it wants your pin number again, and so on. It’s not hard, just boring to tap in every time you pick up your phone, so I set about taking off the ‘screen lock via pin’ thing and did that, and there it is back again the next time I switch on. So, I go to some advice website and follow the instructions: For a Samsung Whatever 9, go to Settings (done that), scroll down to Security (yup), click the remove pin number command (there isn’t one), on the next screen, tap on ‘Edit’ (there isn’t one), uncheck ‘Use pin number’ (there still isn’t one). Try another website and follow the same frustrating procedure while checking I really am using a Samsung Whatever 9, which I am, and start again. Throw phone at the wall to teach it a lesson and, when recovered, use your own logic. Finally found the way to remove fingerprints, which the website had told me will also require your pin, so took off the fingerprint because if I need to use the bank app again, I can put it back on easily and yesterday was the first time I’d used said app, and that’s that. Until I open the phone again and it asks for a pin number.
I finally managed to get through that technical hurdle by finding the glaringly obvious button marked ‘remove your pin’ or something, and everything is back to normal there too. I also had success booking us Blue Star ferry tickets to Athens and back at the start and end of our holiday in March, and splashed out for an outside cabin, not that we will see anything through the porthole, assuming there is one, but I wanted to see what they were like. And so, we can finally get on with today which has started wet with some distant thunder wandering around. If you were wondering, the light and dark of today’s title refers to the sights I see daily. One, the light over the harbour and bay, and the dark of my study when the curtains and shutters are closed against the cold. I mainly see dark during the winter months.
