1995 Eivissa (Ibiza): Fish Monger

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Gran Canaria

 

1995

3 Months

NYC

A Jewel

Eivissa

Tree Abuse

ECO

Black Friday

Bocadillo

Danger!

Estofado

Sangria

Rave

Cannibis

Camino Viejo

Neutrinos

Weather

Roosters

JCS

The PM

Plongeé

Smila

Customs

O. J. Verdict

1995 Eivissa (Ibiza): Fish Monger

A Roar

MacWorld

Padinkos

Bye E, Hello GC

Gran Canaria

Where

A Tour

How

Food

Yumbo

Las Palmas

Playa

1995 Gran Canaria: Potpourri

Norteños

More Food

Irishmen

Heading Home

USA

With Dad

Back at Home

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1995 Eivissa (Ibiza): Fish Monger

Wednesday 4 Oct 1995

It's been four weeks since I arrived in Eivissa; my working vacation is one-third of the way through. So far it's been nothing like what I expected - far more stressful and far less productive. Still, it's an interesting change of pace, but all things considered, I'd like everything to have worked out instead of being stuck in a public demonstrations of Murphy's Law.

Fish Man

1000 Bwoooooop! Bwoooooop! Every Wednesday morning the sound of the Fish Man blowing a seashell alerts the town to the availability of fresh fish. Two elderly women dressed all in black walk to the Fish Man's truck, parked across the street from Fernandito's. One of the village cats moves faster than they, and is first to request the Fish Man's attention.

Fish Man's Customer

The Fish Man stands by his truck, head tossed back, and with puffed cheeks coaxes the piercing wail from the shell. With coffee in hand I walk across the street to peer into the truck. Peering over the old ladies, who I understand to be ordering their usual ("dos kilos siempre"), I see several wooden trays filleh with sardines, one flounder-like fish, and a dozen medium-sized fish. By the time he drives away the truck is almost empty.

I go back to the things I've left at Fernandito's and continue scribbling on my Newton. A man I don't recognize walks slowly down the sidewalk, sees me, and comes up the stairs into the restaurant. Lurching up to the Round Table, he grabs a chair in the nick of time and collapses into it. He's drunk and reeks of alcohol. After a minute Thomás notices him mumbling and brings the man an espresso laced with sugar, which is quaffed. Leslie calls me from across the street.

Back at the office, the replacement computer arrives. DHL has improperly done the customs forms, and I have to pay US$300 to take posession of the computer. (This is money that I won't ever get back. Had DHL done the paperwork properly then I would have received the hardware as a travelling American, and I would have received a complete refund at the airport. So much for DHL's international competence.)

I take the box into the other room, where I have my little computer lab, and begin to unwrap it. It's well-packed. Unfortunately, that's all that the loaner PowerBook is.

  • It's the wrong model. Before I'd embarked on this trip I'd negotiated to rent a PowerBook 170 or 180 with a half-gig drive and a minimum of 8 mb RAM. What arrived? A PowerBook 150 with a 120 mb drive and 4 MB RAM.

  • The deposit required is US$1200 instead of the US$900 I'd negotiated.

  • Only the Disk Tools diskette is provided, not the entire set. Not a very good idea for a computer being sent to someone who is far away from computing resources.

  • The hard disk is badly formatted, and requires a dozen passed by Norton Disk Doctor to be brought back to health. Thank goodness I had NDD with me. I don't know how long the machine would have run with the hard drive having so many errors in its directory structure.

  • The version of the Macintosh operating system is out of date, and what's worse, it's an incomplete installation. Several necessary parts are missing or have been deleted. Luckily I happen to have a complete set of installation floppy images stored on my external hard drive.

  • Some of the last renter's files and applications are still here. I delete them.

  • There's something severely wrong with the keyboard. It's incredibly stiff, and the keys are difficult to depress. Sometimes they creak to a stop, and I have to stop and stab at the offending key several times before it begins to move again. My muscles and tendons are aching after a few minutes of typing (and I have the rest of a book to write on this thing!?!).

  • There's something severely wrong with the electrical system. The screen flickers when the PowerBook is moved, even by the jostling movement of stabbing at the keys. When the hard drive spins up the screen dims.

I'm in a strange predicament here. The loaner is better than nothing, but it's a terrible machine that's already cost me over one-third of it's total rental price just for customs. I'm not very happy with this state of affairs. It looks as though this machine was never checked out before it was sent to me. This from a shop where I've been doing business for over a year, a shop to which I send my consulting clients? The place that I thank by name in the front of my book, Internet TV with CU-SeeMe? Perhaps it's time to take my business elsewhere.

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