Monday, December 14th, 2020
The first day of full quarantine went reasonably well. We managed to sleep until 9:00. After breakfast I made my way to the meeting with mum to receive the router and was back in time for a very interesting call with a partner I have been working with in Turkey. All the while we are monitoring the letter box as we are waiting for the SIM card to arrive.
Getting a 200GB data SIM had been a mission in the first place. I could not procure it as I do not have a German address. I then tried to buy it in my mother’s name, which failed. Then my sister bought it and could do so only because she has a postpaid Telekom account and even then it was a mission and the SIM did not arrive at hers until Thursday at which point in time, she immediately mailed it priority mail. Well, some priority that must have been seeing that 2 business days later it had not yet arrived.
Given school zooms, we decided at some point to track it and it said: “out for delivery”, well that delivery never arrived. When we checked a few hours later the status showed as “could not be delivered and is being returned to sender”. I had a complete meltdown. I called the postal services number just to be told there was nothing they could do. There is no number at the local post office one can call, no way to have a second delivery attempt the following day. I was livid. I am convinced DHL did not even try to deliver it, given we were in the house all day (quarantine!), the letter box was accessible and there was not even a note about “failed delivery”. The only device I have at my disposal is my phone and that only works partially here as the signal is weak. It is not even enough to create a hotspot for my iPad, leave alone my and EM’s laptops.
Turns out the fact that EM has a new SIM card is our fortune. It came with 5GB data, which EM used for her school zooms today and various other activities. Also turns out that the useless German Telekom is giving her an extra 100GB of data free of charge and her phone is able to create a hotspot for both of our laptops, though I only go on to replicate emails.
I will need to check with the German Telekom if we can pay for additional speed, in which case we should be good for the next couple of days. Who would have thought that getting internet in rural Germany can be so hard!
Fortunately, I had promised my colleagues to develop content for a webinar series she would like me to deliver in February during my quarantine week. Luckily this can be done off-line.
I did manage to find a GP here though who can do a PCR rapid test and deliver results within 15 minutes! I have decided Thursday is day 5 (Sun, Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu – no?) so we shall head to take the test Thursday morning and if that returns negative results, we shall pack up and head to mum’s where there is a fully secure and functional internet and EM can take her English oral in peace and quiet and with guaranteed internet stability! All my blog posts may need to wait until then for uploading.