Not Much Shopping

I see so many people out shopping at the moment. Ok, it's coming up to Christmas so that's normal but it's such a pain when you just need to buy something and aren't looking for a gift. If you just want to run in and run out of the shop it's quite difficult. I hate shopping when there are so many people around and I imagine I'm not the only one.

I have seen some nice things in recent weeks. I want to buy a few things for the house and I wouldn't mind some new clothes too. Unfortunately I won't be doing much shopping for the next couple of weeks due to my massive dentist bill, which naturally isn't covered by the Carte Vitale French health insurance.

I had to have a crown which cost 650 euros. 80 of that will be refunded by the French social security system, if I ever get a Carte Vitale. For Ferbent it is much different. He is in the process of getting a bridge, which funnily enough is called a bridge in French and not a pont, which is going to cost a small fortune. It's going to cost 2100 euros of which only 450 will be reimbursed. Ouch. I know it needs to be done but I had really hoped to go away a couple of times before next summer. I don't see how we can do that now. If only I could sell a few more Albanian souvenir t-shirts or some organic hair care products. If only.

France Telecom (Orange) is Crap

This follows on my previous post about TPS being crap which is part of a long, long, long series of posts about France being crap.

My TPS contract ended last week without notice. That wasn't too bad in the end because I was paying over 50 euros per month to watch a lot of rubbish. I decided to just keep the free channels but to do that I had to change my plan. I went to France Telecom (Orange), and they said I had to call. Presumably because the call costs 34 cents per minute which no doubt proves to be a significant souce of income for the telecom.

I went home and called the number they gave me and I couldn't get through. I tried a few times then gave up for the day. The next day I had the same problem so tried another number and got through. They told me to try another number (10 14) which I think is a free call. I spoke to a very nice lady who changed my plan. She put me on hold and then I got disconnected. Not knowing whether or not it was all done I had to call again.

The next lady I spoke to said I had to go to France Telecom to get a new decoder because my old one doesn't work with the new system. I went to Orange and they said I needed a numero de savi, whatever that is.

I went home again and rang the number he gave me but of course that wasn't the right number. After a few calls I found the right number but because I didn't know the decoder model number they couldn't give me the numero de savi. After a lot of pushing he eventually gave it to me.

Back to Orange and I got the new decoder. I tried to confirm that my plan had in fact been changed a couple of days earlier. When he checked the computer it said they were waiting for a signature to change the plan. I don't know how that was going to happen over the phone.

Got home and plugged in the decoder and it worked first time! Yay. I should now be paying less each month but I'll wait for the next bill to see that that is in fact the case. Otherwise I'll have to call them again. Fingers crossed it'll be ok

Organic News and Gardening

My Buy Organic website is coming along well. It is by far the most successful of all the websites I have, probably because it is the site of most interest to me and I spend the most time working on.

The blog is proving to be very popular and having the blog makes it is easy for me to update the site everyday. I do tend to update it everyday. I try to write one article per day and then post a few things on the latest organic news or more often environmental news. There's a lot happening around the world so I try to just pick out things which will be of interest to Australians.

Lately I've been doing quite a few articles on organic gardening. Talking about the best mulches, why to use mulch, the best mulches for suppressing weeds, and then other articles on organic pest control, how to grow pineapples, how to grow organic potatoes, and how to grow organic strawberries.

There's a bit of research involved but seeing I enjoy gardening, it doesn't seem like work when I write these things. The same can't be said for my other websites which have less or little interest for me. I wonder whether I should continue with them or not. Maybe if they started to get more traffic then I'd find them more interesting and worth working on.

I should get back to I suppose. There's plenty of organic news to catch up on.

French Companies Don't Have A Clue

I've been getting TPS through my ADSL line via Orange since I moved to France. I don't watch a lot of TV but there are a few things I want to see which are not on the free channels. One of the main reasons I got it was to watch French movies but as it turns out most of the movies they show are American or old French movies which I've already seen. Until a few months ago I did at least get to watch BBC World News but that has since disappeared without a trace. I see they are still showing it as one of their channels on their website but that is definitely not the case. That only leaves crappy CNN as the English language news channel.

I was getting pretty much all the channels and it was costing around 50 euros per month. I say was because a couple of days ago they cancelled my subscription, without warning. No, I hadn't forgotten to pay the bill. Apparently when I moved house, 8 months ago, I didn't notify them of my change of address. First of all, that's rubbish. I changed my address with France Telecom and the guy there changed all the TPS stuff for me and it has been working fine for 8 months. Secondly, even if they have my old Montpellier address, so what? I'm paying every month for this service why cancel it?

I rang TPS and of course the stupid woman was in such a rush she couldn't explain it to me properly. I asked her to slow down twice but she didn't. From what I gathered the contract couldn't be renewed because they had my old address? I don't know, was I supposed to sign another contract because that had expired? That doesn't make sense because I signed a new contract when I moved to Paris. So what happened? I guess I'll never know.

This is just another example as to why this country is crap and the economy is a mess. Companies don't know what they are doing and customer service is non existent. I always thought that this kind of contract was ongoing. So even though the contract was initially for a year, after that time the customer continues to pay and the companies continues to provide the service until the customer wants to end the contract. I've never heard of a company ending the contract with a customer who is paying the highest level subscription per month and would have continued to so indefinitely. They just threw away my business.

So now I'll either head over to Canal + or maybe I'll just skip the TV altogether and start reading more.

Novelty Gifts

This brief post on novelty gifts is an experiement on how a page ranks depending on links on a page and the test surrounding those links. I’m curious to see if I will get any results with this. So if you are looking for novelty gifts then:

Novelty gifts - Bombshell
Novelty gifts - via Wikipedia
Novelty gifts - McPhee
Novelty gifts - Lastminute
Novelty gifts - Spilsbury
Novelty gifts - via Technorati
Novelty gifts - Reference
Novelty gifts - via Digg
Novelty gifts - via Reddit
Novelty gifts - Techcrunch
Novelty gifts - Buy Organic
Novelty gifts - PrezzyBox

This is a follow up from my previous post about novelty gifts and is based on this original post about novelty gifts. Without links to this post I don't think much will happen but we'll see.

Evian Badoit and Vichy

I know I haven't posted for ages. Nothing has been going particularly well here in France; more bureaucratic problems as usual plus I've been super busy with work. I've been adding a lot of content to my sites in preparation for Christmas so will hopefully have a few more sales than usual this month.

I think in January I'll be able to relax a bit more and start exploring Paris again.

So, what are Evian, Badoit, and Vichy famous for?

The reason I ask is because someone found my site by entering that into Google and it made me laugh out loud. In fact, I'm still sniggering. Maybe it's not funny at all and I'm just in a strange mood. In that person's defence I suppose if you've never been to France you wouldn't know the answer. Then again, who has never heard of Evian, at least?

Of course the answer is.... mineral water.

No doubt the next person visiting Aussie in France will be happy to find a quick answer to that question.

Novelty Gifts for Him and Her

I've been pretty busy lately working on getting sales in the lead up to biggest shopping period of the year. I still have lots to do and have especially been working on a new site about novelty gifts. It is aimed at a UK audience although I think most items can be delivered anywhere around the world.

I'm surprised that novelty gifts and gadgets are so popular. Everyone wants something to play with I guess. I've had a good look around the web to see what's on offer not only for work but because I want to get a novelty gift for him. F is quite difficult to buy for, being the fussy many that he is. However, whenever we go out to the shops he always manages to find things he loves and wants to buy. I often have to drag him away from the shops. It's quite embarrassing really.

I don't know if it's a good idea to surprise him with a gift because he seems to love the act of shopping so much. I wonder if I'm denying him by buying something without him, even if it's for him.

Not only is my man fussy but he also only ever wants unique or unusual gifts. He doesn't want anything popular or common. That's generally a bit difficult but I have found a few things he might be interested in:

• Multi function key.
• Spacepen which writes upside down, on wet paper, or in freezing temperatures.
• Telescope but I don't know what for.
• Heart rate monitor (he loves the gym).
• Binary watch. He'd go crazy for that as he does with any unusual watch.
  
• Super Pen which scans text which you can translate, store or transfer to a computer.

Ok, that last one is probably of more interest to me. I've wanted to get it since I saw it. I'll keep looking for novelty gifts for him and her to see what else is out there.