Day 7 of ADSL flakiness. On Monday December 31st I went to OTE in Iraklio to speak to a real person about my ADSL problems. Of course I didn’t get any further than an administrative staff member who dully noted down what I said (I presented her with a nice spreadsheet of all the...
Read more →On Friday evening the line went down again around 18:30. I could see a pattern emerging here: every evening (afternoon if you’re Greek), the line would lose its sync between 17:00 and 19:00, and would remain unable to connect again for between 10 and 16 hours, until around 10:00 in the morning. During that...
Read more →Well, my christmas present from OTE turns out to be a lemon. Let’s re-cap: on December 19th I ordered the upgrade to 24Mbps. The lady at the other side assured me that I qualified technically. By that I understood that the infrastructure of OTE was capable of actually delivering 24Mbps to my house. On...
Read more →Just in time for the christmas season, OTE, the incumbent telecom operator, which happens to be the supplier of my ADSL connection, has announced drastic price cuts to their services. I ordered my upgrade yesterday and as a result I will soon have a 24Mbps/1Mbps ADSL2+ connection for €29.90/month, VAT, ISP, all inclusive, no...
Read more →So, it’s that time of the year again… A short year it was, and a warm one. Too short and too warm to blog. I had some setbacks, work related, but I won’t dwell on that here. Life’s too short for that. Otherwise we’re doing fine, Yvonne’s practice has really taken off this year,...
Read more →I’m back from my visit to Lefkogia, accompanied by Renata, the civil engineer (not building engineer as I mentioned in the previous article). A civil engineer (‘POLITIKOS MIKANIKOS’) is usually hired to review a specific plot and to ensure that boundaries are within the description in a title document. They can also be consulted...
Read more →Lefkogia is a small village with 239 inhabitants. Its name comes from the white (=lefko) and land (=gea) and obviously has to do with the color of the land of the area. To the east, both Preveli Palm Beach (Limni) as well as the monastery of Preveli can be accessed from the village. To...
Read more →Everybody knows that some countries “excel” in bureaucracy over others. On a European level Greece definitely belongs to the top of the league. On a national playing field within Greece, IKA must be the champion. The one and only requirement to enter the IKA workforce used to be your affiliation with the right political...
Read more →Have a nice Christmas, all of you! Tomorrow we’ll be leaving for Chania, a town in the western part of Crete which we haven’t visited for a long time. We’ll be staying in the El Greco hotel for 4 days and I’m really hoping to find an old Turkish bath-house that is still operating...
Read more →For those of you monitoring the weather forecast here in Crete, don’t worry, we have adapted our camping “technique”, in view of the rain season and expected hurricanes in the bay of Damnoni. After reading all the doom and gloom with regards to the elements next week, we’ve decided it would not be a...
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