Thursday 3rd November, 2016                                      1700

The squealing sort of worked. Mr Wang came with Harriett yesterday, booted up his laptop, connected to my router and then ran a programme. That should have been it but of course this is me involved.

Absolutely nothing and even worse, we couldn’t even connect to my home network!

Eventually Wang asked if I minded if he went home to speak to friends in IT and come back today. No problem, it has been three weeks, another day wouldn’t make any difference. I fiddled about, having emailed Kevin from the hotel, managed to get as far as being able to connect locally but then discovered my router pages come up in Chinese! Absolutely no way could I perform a factory reset but at least Wang could when he came this afternoon.

Or so you would think.

Before he arrived though, I was buggering about with it and wondered if I could connect to any of the other routers in the building. There are dozens of them showing (all security protected) but to my delight the old woman who interrupted in the middle of yesterday to drag Wang away to fix HER internet, has gone for the easiest password possible! 12345678!! So I connected and started downloading iPlayer. I do hope she doesn’t pay by the Mb as it will be downloading all night and probably all day tomorrow.

Anyway, matey came again and somehow, after I had regained access to the router last night, he managed to evict my laptop again. His answer was for me to go with him another day to the main campus IT department where the experts could take a look. I wasn’t as teed off as I might have been because now I knew I could connect illicitly elsewhere provided they don’t cotton on and change to a difficult password. They are elderly so hopefully even less savvy than me.

As he was about to go I played with it and lo and behold I suddenly had internet. Wang shot off like a scalded cat, all the while calling me a genius. I rather wanted him to stay and see what happened after I turned it off and put it back in the office, for what I suspected may happen, did. No internet. Christ I wish Kevin was here! It looks as if a trip to IT is on the cards although not desperately urgent whilst I can access the net. And a little later I can call my bank to try and transfer some money because I have 20y to my name until payday. The new card from June still hasn’t arrived, nor has the next one I requested over a month ago. The letter Suzy posted to the UK at the weekend on the other hand arrived today!

It is however, amazing what effect being able to get online at home has on one’s demeanour!

I have spent the last of my money on wine and ingredients so at worst I will run out of smokes but will have an evening meal and a bottle of red every night until payday. I’m sure the bank will oblige though.