There is murder in the air

 

And the culprit is technology. (And a little bit of forgetfulness on my part.)

I am in New Zealand, visiting my mother, who is in hospital and not well. I brought my mobile phone knowing that I could use a NZ sim card in it. I planned to buy a 2 degrees sim card, a local company who has cheap charges. On my phone I can also access my emails and the internet, solving lots of problems with communication etc. Only I get here to find out my phone is locked. I can’t use the sim card or top up I bought.  The flaming phone is locked to Vodafone and I didn’t know it.

Of course nothing is easy. Vodafone NZ is a different company from Vodafone Australia, so they can’t help. Also, where we are staying, Donna has dial up connection but not wi-fi so I can’t back onto her connection with my computer. It’s terrible how dependant we have become on these little bits of technology. So a trip to the mall here was needed to work out the best way for us to get a phone.

My sister has brought her phone, but can’t use it on roaming, the costs are definitely in the favour of the phone company, charging exorbitant rates for a call or text.  In the end we decided to buy a small cheap phone to use here, and this could use the sim card and top up I had already bought.

We went to the 2 degrees shop and bought a little phone for $29.00.  It sends text messages and makes phone calls. You know…all the stuff that was exciting 10 years ago, now is obsolete. Well, you may know the frustration of working a new mobile phone, all the bells and whistles you have to work out etc. Ha…I dare you to go ten years backwards! It’s even worse. We couldn’t find out how to turn off the predictive text. I finally found a button for that. We still can’t work out how to make the thing make a noise when someone is calling us or when a text comes in, but we do know for a fact that it locks the screen after 5 seconds of no use.

 

The little phone.

We have had to add in any phone numbers we wanted, not lots but a few for Aussie and a few here. The problem comes when you enter them with one digit missing.  I was sending texts to some poor unknown person asking them to pick us up from the train station….they had no idea who we were or who they were supposed to pick up….I have no idea who was at the end of all those texts.

Add to that the fact that I also wanted internet connection so we shopped around for a usb for mobile connection. We got Vodafone for this, cheapest for the gigs we wanted. Then I had to work out how to install the thing and work out how much I was using. I wanted to access my Hotmail account, but of course my computer could tell that I was accessing it from a different country and thought someone was hacking in. So it locked up until I could prove who I was, and the only way was to get a code it would send to my mobile…you know ….the one that I can’t use here.

 It’s easy when you have done this before, but frustrating the first time, especially when the reception is really poor and we are trying to Skype back home. Oh dear!!

And then to top it off, I knew I wanted to add some posts here so I took some photos.  Ah yes, of course I have left the connecting cord at home. We go down to Noel Leeming and buy another one, $10.00 which is fine. But the thing won’t work! I tried it in every usb port on my computer but it just looked at me and grinned saying…no pics from me today!

Noel Leeming...a great shop with good prices, and people who know what they are doing.

After several attempts I confused my computer so much that it forgot it didn’t like the new cord and gave me the pics. Yay!

So, murder is definitely in the air, and for any other overseas trips I will be sorting out this matter with Vodafone so I can use my real phone overseas.  And just a wee footnote here, I realised, well I think I realised that I had not really used my good phone on my last NZ trip, but a different phone that was not locked to a network. Nothing is easy!!!!