like a circle in a spiral
In the Department of Merry Recursive Circularity, I have spent the last week trying unavailingly to access my French bank account. The house my dad left me in France is too dilapidated for rental, and all my tax payments are automated, so I haven't had to access my bank account in the last year. But now some sort of legislative change (I blame Brexit, irrationally) has required me to verify my details online, which has revealed that the French bank has upgraded to a fancy authentication requiring them to send you a pin code via SMS, in sharp contradistinction to my SA bank, which requires the SMS pin only for certain transactions. French bureaucracy is legendary for a reason. When I set up the account I put my South African cell number into the system, and it stuffed up the international format. Now I can't re-access the bank account to correct the number, because I can't get into it without receiving a pin by SMS.
I tried digging out the various email addresses on bank notifications I've received and sending them a frantic plea in bad French, with an English translation below in case I muck it up completely, but they're all bouncing, with polite notes that they won't be read and I need to access my client space to send a query. That's the client space that needs the SMS pin. They have a fancy email query option on the bank website, but two screens in it requires a French telephone number so they can do quality assurance callbacks, and they won't let you proceed without it. Oh, and they need your address, with a French postal code. I am extremely reluctant to try their phone helpline, because (a) it'll cost me a fortune from here if they put me on interminable hold, and (b) my French isn't up to it.
I have, in sheer desperation, concocted a semi-fraudulent email form query which uses my dad's old, defunct landline in France (and it took me half an hour of rather painfully reminiscent digging to find the damned thing) and the post code of the house itself, mashed together with my actual SA address and details. I have appended a frank, manly note pointing out the necessity for desperate, fraudulent shifts in order to submit at all. It remains to be seen whether or not they will answer. Sigh.
Closer to home, I am in somewhat of a cleaning frenzy as the nice landlord came and sorted out leaking pipes in the back courtyard last week, which entailed angle-grinding the brickwork, so the whole house is subtly coated with brick-dust. Codsworth has done two full cleans and is still picking up the wretched stuff, memo to self, really must work out how to hack his voice module so I can add the game character's whinges about the dust created by nuclear apocalypse. His new party trick, which made me giggle excessively, is to pick up Jyn's plastic ball with a bell in it in his spinny whisker sensor things, and to chase it around the house, jingling merrily. The first time he did it I vaguely wondered why Jyn had suddenly found an attention span for her games, usually she plays for twenty seconds and loses interest. Codsworth, clearly, is made of sterner stuff. This entry has been crossposted from my Dreamwidth blog at https://freckles-and-doubt.dreamwidth.org/. The comment action is all over there, and supports OpenID.
I tried digging out the various email addresses on bank notifications I've received and sending them a frantic plea in bad French, with an English translation below in case I muck it up completely, but they're all bouncing, with polite notes that they won't be read and I need to access my client space to send a query. That's the client space that needs the SMS pin. They have a fancy email query option on the bank website, but two screens in it requires a French telephone number so they can do quality assurance callbacks, and they won't let you proceed without it. Oh, and they need your address, with a French postal code. I am extremely reluctant to try their phone helpline, because (a) it'll cost me a fortune from here if they put me on interminable hold, and (b) my French isn't up to it.
I have, in sheer desperation, concocted a semi-fraudulent email form query which uses my dad's old, defunct landline in France (and it took me half an hour of rather painfully reminiscent digging to find the damned thing) and the post code of the house itself, mashed together with my actual SA address and details. I have appended a frank, manly note pointing out the necessity for desperate, fraudulent shifts in order to submit at all. It remains to be seen whether or not they will answer. Sigh.
Closer to home, I am in somewhat of a cleaning frenzy as the nice landlord came and sorted out leaking pipes in the back courtyard last week, which entailed angle-grinding the brickwork, so the whole house is subtly coated with brick-dust. Codsworth has done two full cleans and is still picking up the wretched stuff, memo to self, really must work out how to hack his voice module so I can add the game character's whinges about the dust created by nuclear apocalypse. His new party trick, which made me giggle excessively, is to pick up Jyn's plastic ball with a bell in it in his spinny whisker sensor things, and to chase it around the house, jingling merrily. The first time he did it I vaguely wondered why Jyn had suddenly found an attention span for her games, usually she plays for twenty seconds and loses interest. Codsworth, clearly, is made of sterner stuff. This entry has been crossposted from my Dreamwidth blog at https://freckles-and-doubt.dreamwidth.org/. The comment action is all over there, and supports OpenID.