Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Internet’ Category

We’re all catching the cold off James now :((

John has an absolute mountain of prescriptions to get over the bronchitis. Back in the UK, you’d be talking a cough bottle. Here, we kick off with physiotherapy to loosen up the stuff in his lungs (he definitely didn’t like that), a couple of bottles of medicine and a steam thingy. It’s not really speeding it up as compared to the cough bottle approach though.

Remember those TVs that we bought in Spain back in late December? Well, contrary to what it said on the in-store sign and indeed the menu system on the TVs themselves, they don’t support SECAM which is the TV standard used in France. Anyway, that meant a trip back to Media Markt (a German outfit) in Girona to get a refund. Apart from the massive queue at the refund counter (largely taken up with returning the same make of TV as we’d bought), it was a doddle. I even got to try out my Spanish.

Girona is close enough to Barcelona that we just kept going and did this weeks shopping in Badalona (a suburb of Barcelona). It’s a bit rundown in comparison to Baricentro where we went last time so we’ll hardly be back. Mataro seems a much nicer looking place and is even closer to Girona (and easier to get to). So why don’t we do our shopping in Girona itself? Well, they haven’t a terribly good selection of shops (at least we haven’t found any). We’d also like to get a bit more familiar with Barcelona.

I thought that it was time I upped the ante with the web design software as I was running off the end of Frontpage Expess. I’d heard good things about Dreamweaver so that was first port of call. But then I saw the price: £370!! That seemed a bit much seeing as Frontpage weighs in at £140 but it gets better as my student status results in a price for Frontpage of £40 which is a bit of a bargain. Anyway, I spent the last few days getting it into Frontpage format and the latest version is getting uploaded as I write this.

Whilst that mini-update was in progress, I realised that I could add a few more languages by sprucing up the mini-descriptions on the Ryanair site (themselves courtesy of a friend of a friend who translated the mini-English version into German and Italian for me). Anyway, we now have a very impressive series of little flags on the pages: German, English, French, Spanish and Italian. Sadly, just on the main hotel page and the transport pages but they’re the important ones. Incidently, re the other languages, French was a total waste of time as French people seem to search in English. I’ll probably get the regional guide up to date in French but I’m not too bothered about that now. Even though the translation is dreadful, we actually get quite a few hits on the Spanish site and the other day it was the top ranked Spanish language site on Pyrenees Orientale tourism!

Don’t know how useful the German version is/will be but we do get a fair number from the Italian listing on Ryanair so perhaps plonking that on our own website will get a few more euros in the bank. So far, we’ve not had any German Ryanair folk but then 2004 year was a bit of an off year for German tourism.

Oh, yeah, the weird French couple. They are our main regular guests, arriving in our third week in April and having been here several times since. Wendy was sure that they were going to skip without paying originally! We get about EUR 150 from them every time but they’re a bit of a nuisance as they carry a mountain of stuff, completely rearrange the room and always want filtered coffee first thing in the morning.

Have to see about getting a few more telly’s now. The plan is that initially we’ll run with five. One room is already wired up for French TV and the room just next to it will be very easy to wire up in a similar way so we’re intending that that will be the French side of the building. We’re hoping to roll out UK TV for the three rooms on the other side of the building but we’ll need to get a bigger satellite dish first as the signal strength just isn’t up to running more than one TV at the moment (I’m toying with the idea of trying out a signal booster first).

The other week, it was the septic tank causing us problems, now it’s the turn of the well….

We own two water sources: a spring which was used up to two owners ago and a well which the last guy switched over to. It saves us having to pay the equivalent of the water rates but it’s not “free” as we need to maintain the pumping equipment etc. Normally, it’s fine apart from very busy days in the summer and also in september when the winery are using lots and lots of water; at those times, all that needs doing is to make sure the storage tank is full in the morning which we do by flicking the pump off and on (don’t know why, but it switches off after a while and before the tank is full).

Anyway, things were going fine ’til 2 or 3 days ago when every night we ran completely out of water (the first time ever!) and had to do the flicking thing. That time actually co-incided with the arrival of the grand-daughter of the guy who owned the place two owners ago (she’s the last person living who supposedly knows how the system works!). We thought that perhaps we’d turned a tap that she pointed out as we were walking round but we think we’ve undid all that we did then and still no water: it looks like we’ve emptied the well!

We’re in the process of getting ourselves onto our first American site: www.ownerdirect.com . Hopefully, it’s not typical of the American sites as they wanted so much information entered that it took hours to type it all in and we’ve still a couple of detailed things to do like measuring up the rooms. It’s another one of those guaranteed reservation places too so we’ll have to add it to our list of places for the January update (at the moment, we’ve listed more rooms in total than we actually have which is OK for the winter but, all being well, wouldn’t be OK for the summer so the plan is to sit down in January and make sure that the total is no more than our actual number of rooms).

While we were looking round for our 1-800 number, we found out that you can call American 800 numbers from abroad if you replace the 800 by 880 eg you can call us from outside the US by dialling 00 1 880 571 6392.

We’re starting to make a bit of progress with the backlog of administration and it’s looking like in another week or so we’ll be up to date.

Yesterday was “toilet day”. We have a growing collection of toilets that aren’t operational for a variety of reasons so we thought that we’d blitz them. Net effect is that the two at the back of the dining room are ready to go though we need to put a new seat on one of them, the room 10 cistern is filling up normally, and the two outside toilets just need a bit of cleaning to get them going. The only serious one now is the one in the lobby which is still blocked up after the latest stupid guest flushed something down it and clogged it up (no, not that!).

We reckon that we need a new car for next year as the RAV4 isn’t really up to carrying the people and stuff. Sooo, we’ve started thinking about what we need and have come up with the following little list of essentials:
– 4wd, because we hope to do tours into the ski areas in due course;
– 6 or 7 seater, because we’re starting to do a lot more airport shuttle runs than expected and also because we want to do little tours;
– diesel, because it’s costing us a fortune in petrol.

We’d like automatic too ‘cos Wendy can’t drive manuals and ‘cos I’m to lazy to drive them.

I was thinking that a long wheelbase Landrover would do the biz but I gather that they’re awful to drive so that’s put me off them. In the frame for consideration at the moment are the Mitsubishi Shogun (called Montero here) and the Nissan Patrol.

Does anybody have any thoughts on those (or indeed other cars we should be looking at)?

Dunno what happened, but we’re up to over 120 readers a day of Mas Camps News!!

Remember a few weeks back that I said that I’d plonked all these little e-mails onto a blog (now living at Foreign Perspectives)? Well, I was looking at the stats this evening and I’ve managed to pick up 1000 readers since then!!

Fame at last. Wendy reckons we should go for the “fortune” and try to make some money out of it.

A first… it’s warmer in Belfast than it is here!!

A good time to get going on the backlog of administration that built up over the summer. Once we hit the start of July nothing got done that didn’t have to get done right away, net effect of which is that I’ve just completed the accounts for June and am about half way through the July accounts. All being well, I’ll have caught up with things in a week or two.

We have our first ebay client with us at the moment. Didn’t make too much on the room charge but they had a meal last night which has brought the income from them well up. We haven’t really sussed out the ebay sales yet but are optimistic that we’ll do OK with it once we get a good formula sorted. So far the score is: first attempt at full price, lots of interest, two pathetic bids, no sale; second attempt around half price with breakfast included, less interest (further into October explains that I think), one sale (that’s the guys that are here now); third attempt also around half price but ex-breakfast, some interest but no sale yet (the listing is still current); fourth attempt with no accommodation charge (yes, John, FREE!!) but compulsory meal purchases, quite a lot of early interest (also a current listing).

Anyway, must head off as we need to get some more serious clothing… the t-shirt and shorts aren’t really up to the current weather.