The Search for Technology in Windhoek
Good day. This is January 31st and May 1st, so Saturday and Sunday. With a healthy breakfast, I got on my way to Windhoek because I had looked at the shopping center in Okahandja and there wasn’t much going on that would help. They didn’t have any iPhones or anything. As it turned out, there are two iStores in Windhoek in two different shopping malls. So I opted for the one and found my iPhone and computer that I could purchase, except they didn’t have everything that I wanted there, so I had to go to the other mall to actually pick them up.
The Activation Challenge
Then I was counting on getting my phone back in use again, but it turned out they told me that I needed to call the Apple support line on a landline. And while the store had a landline, they would not allow me to call it there to get that thing figured out. At the same time, I could not obtain a SIM card without my passport. It requires a passport to get a SIM card. So all things said and done, I really was kind of stuck without a landline, and the most obvious place was to take up Jennifer and Byron’s offer that I could come back there and they would help me out.
Returning to Generous Friends
So I made a call and that’s what happened. I ended up going back to Okahandja, and very nice that they would accommodate me again and help out with what was going on. Then the next day they wanted to go to church and I was invited so I took them up on that and I got to experience an Afrikaner church service.
The Afrikaner Church Experience
Most of it was in Afrikaans. Now Afrikaans is considered Old Dutch which I guess it is Old Dutch, just developed a different direction for the last 350 years or so. And there’s a lot of words that I would recognize, but the connections between all the words don’t always add up, or they are just so changed that if I can read it, I probably get more out of it than when people speak it. I got to meet several people in the church, and Jenneke was taking a big part in the service with her singing and playing keyboard. It was very nice.
Finally Making Progress
So then after that, Byron took me to his place of work and I was able to use a landline to call up Apple support, and that basically brought that I needed to get my eSIM changed to my new phone, and they would not be able to do that. That would be AT&T. I’m just explaining that there’s a lot of runaround when you’re trying to deal with this stuff. I mean, this all happened on Thursday, and now it’s Sunday. And I still haven’t gotten things other than that I have the equipment. It’s just not yet working.
Success at Last
So we ended up going back home at the Kochs’ house and trying to, through a chat with AT&T, get things moving. But that of course turned into a real call, and eventually by the end of the day I got my phone back in use. Then the next thing was to move everything back down from the cloud, at least good enough. I do have things in the cloud and I was able to figure out the passwords and whatever else it takes. It’s an intense thing. So well on my way, and it takes a few days, or at least it took a few days to get everything moved back down from the cloud because it’s a time-consuming thing. But the computer seems to know when to get to work. So I’m starting to feel a lot better. Not happy about the extra expense, but life in the fast lane. Thanks for coming along. See you tomorrow.
