Trying to phone Sony

The wonders of the telephone. The miracle of menus. In the last couple of hours I have collected a large number of telephone numbers for Sony in the Netherlands. But when I need support for my new Sony VAIO laptop, it all comes down to the special "VAIOlink" phone number. 
However in order to be allowed access to this number, one has to type in a serial number. If you don't type in a serial number or you get it wrong, there's no option to actually get a human on the line. After trying five times the phone and getting unceremoniously kicked off the phone, I eventually wandered through all kinds of other menus on other Sony telephone numbers, which always seemed to come back to that one number which needed a serial number. Even if I said I was interested in purchasing a NEW Sony laptop, I still got through through to the same machine that wanted me to enter a serial number for a laptop I hadn't even bought yet! Catch-22!
So eventually I tried hitting buttons at random to get through the menus and finally got onto somebody from a completely different department of Sony (televisions) who told me a neat little trick. If your serial number doesn't work, then just type 12345678# 1234567#. And that works. At last I managed to get someone on the phone on that magic VAIOlink number who actually confirmed that my serial number is correct, even if the telephone system won't accept it. but this takes hours and it's interesting to note that Sony has abolished virtually all ways of getting in touch with the human being unless you know the secret code or, in this case, the hack.
But unless Sony wants its customers to be driven totally crazy before they manage to get anyone on the phone, I would recommend checking your phone system. If it was made by Sony, that is certainly not a recommendation.

Black Pete and Haji Firuz

Holland, along with parts of Belgium and Germany, has an alternative to Christmas. It bears similarities to the Anglo-saxon feast (an old man with a huge white beard and a red cape), but in Holland it is called Sinterklaas and is celebrated from mid-November to 5 December. It's based on Saint Nicolas, the forefather of Santa Claus and he comes from Spain with Moorish slaves instead of from the North Pole with reindeer.

The slaves have become Black Petes which some consider racist (certainly the politically correct and some foreigners). The Black Petes most probably do have their roots in slavery, but the Moors were more slave traders than slaves themselves and the way the feast has been celebrated for the last few generations, the feast is anything but racist. With a deeply rooted tradition of toe-curlingly infantile rhymes disguising pithy truths that are otherwise left unsaid, with chocolate letters and spicy cookies, it's enormous fun and deserves to be regarded as world heritage. But there have been minor protests in the last couple of years and I can understand Americans especially being confused by this display of black-face.

Anyway, suddenly some Professor from the University of the West Indies has apparently been commissioned to "investigate" for the UN. But before she even started she condemned the feast and said it should be banned. That's one sure way to unite the Netherlands as never before. A Facebook page dedicated to preserving the feast got 1.5 million likes in only one day. Our professor was interviewed on the Dutch news and commented that the Dutch should just adopt Father Christmas and abandon Sint Nicolaas. Even UN diplomatic circles are now apparently embarrassed by her insensitivity and if anything encourages and evokes racism it is this stupid professor from Jamaica by the name of Verene Sheperd.

 
BTW - there are many similar festivities and there is even an Iranian feast based on the same mix of characters with black-faces - Haji Firuz - and that is on the world heritage list. (Not to mention the Washington Redskins.)

You would think a Jamaican professor would be more worried about gays being murdered in Jamaica (and Iran) than in combatting a festive celebration of diversity which does have its roots back in the 17th century with young slave-boy servants. But let's enjoy this feast and focus on solving more serious problems - wars, a global economic crisis , the abuse of women and gays and growing extremism, terrorism and fundamentalism in the world. 

Links:
ZwartePietenbands
Wikipedia

LinkedIn? Link Me Out!

This is so embarrassing!
For years I have avoided the temptation to check my email address book in LinkedIn, but today I succumbed. I was on LinkedIn to accept a request from someone I knew and this time I did click on the "check your address list". The comment "Your email is safe with us! We will not store your password or email anyone without your permission" was reassuring. It came up with a page on which I could see eight possible connections. I unchecked seven of them. They were people I would not consider emailing a request to connect on LinkedIn because I didn't know them well enough - occasionally not at all - and there may have been one I wouldn't want to connect to on LinkedIn. Unchecking seven took an age, which should have been a warning, but having succeeded, I went ahead and clicked on "Add connections". Only then did I see that this wasn't a page with only eight possible connections. I could have scrolled down and found several hundred more.
My email software is set to add everyone I have mailed to my address list - it can be useful. But hence my desire to check through the LinkedIn list and hence also my rough estimate of one in eight I would want to connect to. But I ended up asking several hundred people to connect, many of who I don't even know. Within an hour I had about thirty acceptances, many from people I have never heard of. That is strange, as I tend to want to have met someone face to face or have intensive electronic contact before adding them to my LinkedIn network. I even received an automatic reply from info@Bol.com but also some from people wanting to know whether and how they know me. I know the feeling. Now I know why I receive so many requests from people I don't know, some even through the info address of my software company.
Adding to the confusion is the fact that there is a recommendations page on LinkedIn. I get a page with four connections/skills I can choose to recommend. I can recommend all or each individually. I assumed the connections page was similar.
So how do I undo the damage? Will LinkedIn please unlink the people I don't know and send a bunch of flowers to everyone who got spammed? And also forward this blog to all of them?

Videos I have to see every day.

First there were LPs and singles that I played to destruction on a gramophone. Then I turned to cassette tapes until the machine chewed them up. It took a while before I moved on to CDs and then came MP3s and now it's all YouTube and Spotify. The addition of video has made live music a lot more interesting, and some videos just blow me away. 
For instance, Roy Hargrove is one of the greatest trumpeters around, and I have to watch Strasbourg St Denis at least once a day to remain anywhere near sane:

Long before YouTube there was another Tube - on Britain's Channel Four and starring a much younger Jools Holland. I even helped him make an episode in Amsterdam in the early 1980s. 
Now the inimitable Jools has switched his allegiance to the BBC and makes an even greater programme - Later. It is essential viewing and provides first glimpses of great new talent. For instance Lianne La Havas:

Okay - Roy Hargrove is a great trumpeter, but Ian ain't bad either. 

I could go on with KT Tunstall and BAM and Amy Winehouse and Johan Fretz and Gunga. And more from Later like Eric Clapton. 

Dichter bij de burger?

Decennialang wateroverlast in de Bilderdijkstraat door een parkeergarage, jaren van stankoverlast op het Mercatorplein.  

WaterNet, Stadsdeel en eigenaren zijn blijkbaar heel goed in de schuld afschuiven maar niet zo goed in problemen oplossen.

Zo is het ook gegaan in de Bilderdijkstraat. Er waren grote bomen en geen fietspad of vrije trambaan. Om die te realiseren zouden de bomen moeten wijken en andere bomen komen. Maar toen werd de Partij van de Bomen wakker en moesten de mooie plannen wijken voor een misbaksel: een veel te smal fietspad voor snorscooters terwijl fietsgebruik explodeert. Bomen en fietsen samen kunnen voor goede lucht zorgen, als de snorscooters maar verbannen worden en als men niet altijd afgaat op aaibaarheid.

Deze week hebben de eigenaren van  Anderz aan het Mercatorplein besloten de zaak te sluiten vanwege jarenlange stankoverlast n in huurpand. Op de dag dat Anita Groenink vanwege het buurtinitiatief Geef op de Jan Eef in Metro gelauwerd wordt omdat het zoveel beter gaat met de Jan Evertsenstraat kopt Het Parool “Stankoverlast Mercatorplein blijkt wel schadelijk voor gezondheid”. 

Dat er een probleem is bij het Mercatorplein was blijkbaar al jaren bekend, maar dat ga je natuurlijk niet aan de grote klok hangen als je mensen wil trekken. Maar nu komt dat wel heel erg ongelukkig in de krant. En wat heeft ons stadsdeel de laatste jaren gedaan om het probleem op te lossen? Hoeveel deskundigen hebben de problemen ter plekke bestudeert? Hoe kan het zijn dat een klein probleem zoals rioolstank niet aangepakt kan worden?


Nu komt er misschien een nieuwe parkeergarage in de Singelgracht. Op zich ben ik daar niet tegen, maar ik zou wel bewijzen willen zien dat het stadsdeel opkomt voor de burgers en niet – zoals zo vaak – de weg van de minste weerstand kiest om daarna enige resulterende problemen met een schouderophaal te begroeten.