Ok, so this is not the worst thing going on in the world right now.

However, it is mightily irksome when you pay (or will be paying) for a service that just doesn’t live up to the hype.

But enough of that – you don’t want to hear me wingeing.  You want to read tales of derring do in Houston.

Not too much derring or do just now in Houston. Domesticity has crept up on me and apart from my remote work for RGU, I do seem to manage to fill the day perfectly well with rather mundane activities. The latest major excitement for me has been the arrival of a wide variety of online purchases for the home. Would they live up to the pretty pictures on the websites? Would I remember what the h**l I bought anyway?

I have to say that almost without exception, the delivery of items has been wonderful. They are left on the doorstep routinely which also means I don’t have to hang about in the house and as we are in a gated community, it’s pretty safe.

Less enjoyable is assembling flat pack furniture. That’s not been a tremendous joy and has filled many hours that I won’t get back. On the plus side – I can now use an allen key (or wrench as it is rather inaccurately described in the instructions) quite well without breaking my nails. And I can do the bedside tables (or night stands as they are called here) from World Market blindfold. My pb is around half an hour.

Ordering things online has been a bit of a challenge due to the language barrier. Normal household items here have different names so a lot of guesswork has to be done to get to what you want via search on the internet. Now as I am a Search Engine Optimisation expert (well – not really but more so than most) I understand the importance of using the correct keyword in your web content. But when you don’t even know the right keyword to use in the first place, it all gets a bit messy and random.

So here are some useful translations: curtains are drapes and are usually sold singly rather than in pairs though why anyone would only want one is beyond me; curtain poles are, therefore, drape rods; valanced sheets for the bed are rather attractively known as bedskirts; and a corner unit for one’s kitchen is a breakfast nook.

One thing which has been most unreliable here of late is the weather. We enjoyed some wonderful sunny warm days in January and I know I annoyed many of you with my pics of the pool at the apartment complex. But today, once again, Houston has been shivering in temperatures of 3 degrees. I now look at the temperature and it has climbed to 7 and only just overtaken Aberdeen for the first time in 3 days. On Sunday we were sweltering in 24 degrees and it was muggy. We ventured out on Sunday evening to a local hostelry and Maurice wore his shorts. Within half an hour of leaving the house, the temperature had plummeted, the wind was up and the cold front had made an unwelcome appearance. Maurice’s knees (and perhaps some areas further north) were blue.

Today – from the 3 degrees of this morning – we are due to reach the balmy heights of 13 by 5pm which is a pretty large leap in a day. Early next week we are set to be at 26 again. So never a dull moment here – nothing predictable about the weather at this time of year – but here’s  hoping it settles down a bit. The heating/aircon systems are getting a bit confused not to mention this ex-pat.

So on to the Xfinity saga. I really won’t bore you with the entire debacle, but suffice to say it has been one of the worst customer experiences of my life. With the exception of Orange/EE. And perhaps BT/Scottish Gas/Sky at times.

The Orange/EE issue was with my UK mobile. For some reason Orange take 28 days to send you a new pay as you go SIM. O2 sent Maurice his in a day. We wanted to cancel our mobile contracts but keep the UK numbers going with PAYG SIMs. Needless to say my SIM had not arrived prior to leaving the UK but arrived via re-directed mail some 2 weeks later. Then it became inordinately difficult to get anyone at Orange to understand what I wanted to do. I spent the best part of 2 hours on 3 separate phone calls only to find the issue was not sorted, and that Orange had the cheek to charge me yet another month’s payment for the monthly contract I  had been trying to cancel since the end of November! I have since spoken to them, emailed them, and cursed them – to finally receive this week a refund of the month’s charges. My UK number is now transferred to a PAYG SIM but I dread to think what will happen when I try to top this up online from here….

Ok – back to Xfinity. We have never had ‘on demand’ since we subscribed nearly 4 weeks ago. So at the end of last week we made serious efforts to finally get this fixed. Only to result in us having no tv at all – nothing. And the final straw was a general ‘outage’ on Monday which took out phone and internet too. There was more to the story than this – including many, many phone calls to their helpline – which is of course automated. I can practically recite the options and the disclaimer which informs us that they can tell there are problems on our line. And all of this from a voice that very frustratingly, can’t listen to you. It asks for voice responses then tells you ‘sorry, I can’t understand that response’ because the automated listening device can’t understand my accent. I have resorted to the most ridiculously exaggerated American accent to try to get the thing to understand! Finally, when you do get a real person, it is really hit and miss who you get and if they are at all interested in your problems.

These technical issues were finally resolved by a very capable young man called Melvin who came to the house yesterday. We did indeed have a signal problem which after 3 hours he has fixed – for now. Excuse my pessimism.

It has made me contemplate the complexity of the infrastructure in a city like Houston: a huge sprawling city with many construction projects and service provision issues. Is there a point at which a city gets just too big to cope with all the major service demands? Maurice and I have concerns for rubbish – or rather garbage – disposal. Unlike Aberdeen we have not one but two refuse collections per week, including a recycling collection which we use extensively. But disposing of garbage, sewerage and other unmentionables in a city of this scale must be immensely challenging. Especially in a consumer society which loves its packaging and also its polystyrene, plastic and other non-biodegradable products.

But they do seem to dispose of it remarkably well here. You don’t see much litter on the streets and certainly not in the public parks. It must be a major industry.

A sadder tale is of the number of homeless ‘pan handlers’ we see around the streets. Many take up positions at busy intersections with traffic lights and appeal directly to car drivers and passengers with their scrawled notices proclaiming desperate times.

One of our ‘local’ homeless has taken up residence in what can only be described as a very large  rubbish bin near to Burger King and Pizza Hut. He is known to the staff in these establishments and appears to use their toilet facilities, and, one can only presume, he gets the odd scrap of food from the surplus there too. He must be very cold right now.

What has brought someone to a point in their life where living in a refuse container is the only choice they have? In a mega-wealthy country, as the USA is, it is a social disgrace. Do they have a choice? We are led to believe there are shelters for the homeless and that not many of the pan handlers are truly without a roof over their heads. But surely to goodness if you could choose a shelter over a rubbish bin you would.

Wouldn’t you?