Lisbon!
We just want a phone number and some wifi, is that too much to ask?

Apparently yes.

We were WARNED, yes, and so we're "okay with it," but it IS kind of
awe-inspiring to see incompetence at this level. We signed up for 
phone service and Internet when we arrived eight days ago, and have
neither provisioned yet. The phone is particularly galling because
I keep getting told to be patient, but you can do NOTHING around 
here without a local phone number. We tried to have a refrigerator
delivered, and the store scheduled the delivery without saying a
thing about having a phone number. But when the order came up the
delivery service just said "Nope, no phone number" and returned 
our items to the warehouse. 

Note they also had our e-mail addresses, but didn't bother emailing
us. We only found out about the order cancellation because after a
week we went back to the store and after taking a number and waiting
and a bunch of phone calls finally the guy told us everything was
back in the warehouse.

Okay, refund our money.

Nope, we can't do that until the warehouse returns the items to
inventory. When's that gonna happen? We don't know. Will you
tell us? You'll see the credit in your bank account. Next month,
or the month after. 

Sigh.

So that's been getting me down. Joy was brilliant and got us a 4G
Internet hotspot which is better than nothing, but is also so 
excruciatingly slow that it's often easier for me to go out and 
find an open wifi signal than it is to use the hotspot.

Tonight however we're in Lisbon to see Florence and the Machine
tomorrow at a music festival... IF we can stay up until she 
takes the stage at 11:30 pm!! Okay, look, I don't say this a lot,
but I'M OLD. I don't DO 11:30 pm anymore unless it's to get up 
to pee. So I may simply wander aroudn the festival till I get tired
and go back to the rental. 

Which has good wifi. Hence this entry.

When the Portuguese efficiency gets me down - and it did the other
day - it's been good to Get Out. Yesterday we went to Praia do
Figureoa (Figureoa Beach) on the bus. It was crowded with children
ready for the beach both coming and going but it was sure fun.
It was very nice to sit at the local bar in a chair watching 
the rental umbrellas carom across the sand, chased by their renters.

Actually I have to put in a good word about Navegante, the bus system.
THEY got us a bus card in an hour! Went in with spare passport photos
that Joy hung on to (she is, I might point out, brilliant) and they
banged those personalized cards out pronto. What can the cards do?
We can ride any public transit anywhere in the Greater Lisbon
metro area! That means we can go up to Sintra, or around Setubal
or, like today, all around central Lisbon... for a flat monthly fee.
Navegante is a frood who always knows where his towel is.

Okay, enough phlogging, time for bed. Hi Alfred! Hi Sue! Hi Doug!

P.S. at 10 pm this evening I got another email from the lady at
the phone company - "Can you put your SMS card in and see if you
get a text that makes things work?" Sure, the phone is useless
otherwise, why not? I email back within three minutes that I did it.
Nothing. No reply to the email, nothing new working on the phone.
And what was she doing emailing us at 10 pm?

Okay, g'night!