Sunday, May 30, 2010

Watching TV

After six months of stay here, we have not chosen if we will get a cable or satellite TV connection. So far our movies are regularly provided by a friend who has wall-load of DVDs. Until tennis season on clay came, i.e., Roland Garros in May, I need to act on what to get.

To explain our preferences I have to present to you our family. We are a mixed culture marriage, (German and Filipina plus strong inclination to Latin America as our son was born by choice in Argentina). My husband is happy to live with having a BBC Channel. I need the movies channel and definitely they should be in English plus a sports channel. My son goes to the German School but nevertheless would prefer having his cartoons in English. Quite complicated, huh! But in summation we would like to have a great choice of English Channels.

So the search starts and there are several options.

UPC
T-com Magio and Cable
Orange

If you go to their websites, thanks to Google Translate of Google Chrome one can understand their offers. I will not elaborate on what I found about each of them. As I have been in a furnished flat for a month with cable what I can say is that there was BBC, one or two cartoon channels, AXN, HBO etc. And apart from BBC and CNN everything is in Slovak, some in Czech. I know that T-com offers channels in Hungarian too. One time I went personally to T-com to ask them if during installation they can install the HBO, Cinemax etc in English. They can not. However, in their website they claim that one can watch these channels in different languages. How true? I did not risk it. Why should I subscribe to cable or satellite TV if I can not watch any of them apart from some channels which is not even interesting to us?

Other choice is your own satellite. We actually have two dishes in the house. Just need a receiver. Some said to be able to watch movies from your own country, you could also apply for the local satellite provider. Bring the card here, call a technician and voila, you are with the channels of your own country, in your own language. But of course you need to pay this in your home country but that could be arranged.

And came Roland Garros Tennis Open.....time is running out. Before this I watched the tennis matches on live stream. I was ok with this because there are lots of options of matches one can watch. My husband connected the PC also to the TV so I got a big screen. Until one day my lifesaver, a friend who is leaving gave me an old receiver of his. The receiver is already programmed to receive most German channels. My husband has his BBC, my son has cartoons in German and I have Eurosport. I have not solved the problem with the movies of HBO and Cinemax but our friend is here to lend me movies until July. Until then I can live with that as Wimbledon is still coming.

Happy watching!

Saturday, May 29, 2010

Six Month Glitch

Wikipedia: A glitch is a usually short-lived fault in a system.

I started writing this end of May and it is very true for me everytime we move to a new country. The glitch is a sadness and emptiness I feel at this point of time. It happens when you have rented your house, your container arrived, found the school for your child, got your car and now what???? Yes the very big question of now what?

I have been attending once a week Slovak language course, I have been playing tennis, I have my routine, I know which supermarket I wanna go, I go to Mah-jong, I love my house, etcetera, etcetera.

And my glitch pertains to having FRIENDS! A friend whom you can just talk to about whatever, whose door you knock on whichever time of the day, and just meet without any diary appointment. And at this very same time I made friends with Simmi. An Indian girl who is so open to whatever we want to do together. I just love her. Plus her gorgeous daughter and the never-late and never-be-late husband. Plus summer was finally greeting us that we could invite friends for a swim and eat a non-formal dinner.

And this is the end of my sixth month glitch as after I feel it, life definitely starts rolling fast, so fast it is now end July in which I got so busy to be able to finish this post.

Happy summer!