I AM only just recovering from spending 32 minutes and nine seconds on my laptop to make an internet bank transfer. There are only 12 steps involved, and I’ve done it many times before, so what happened? And how did I occupy my time for the average of 2 mins. 41 seconds before the appearance of the next screen – which was after the little ‘loading’ wheel in the top-left hand corner had stopped spinning (no, gyrating slowly) and the green bar at the bottom had finally moved along?
 
12.04:07 ... waiting for bank’s website to download:  Went outside for a cigarette (I don’t smoke in the house); butted it out half-way when I saw through the study window that the site had appeared on my screen.

12.06: 48 ... waiting for ‘Log on with customer identity number’: Went to fridge and refilled my drink; it’s after 12:00 noon, which is when I usually have a glass of wine, but I decided to have tonic water instead ... didn’t want to be transferring the wrong amount of money into the wrong account.

12.09:29 ... waiting for ‘Enter customer password’: Stared aimlessly out of the window, and noticed it’s quite windy today, so went outside to skim the leaves off the top of the swimming pool.

12.12:12 ... waiting for ‘Enter the 8-digit security code sent to your mobile’: Went looking for the ‘phone. Our ‘land line’ has been out of service for 10 days now (the cables have been nicked, so it’s going to take ages to replace them). If I can’t find my handbag (wherein lies said mobile), I usually telephone from the land line, to track down the ringing handbag. This was obviously not possible, so I retraced last night’s steps through the house – study to TV room to wine fridge to TV to bedroom – and found the bag in the kitchen (must have been when I made dinner). By this time, the next step had crawled onto the screen:

12.14:41 ... waiting for ‘Select bank function’ (in my case, Make payment or transfer): Went upstairs to make the bed, as I noticed, during the handbag search, that I had forgotten to do so this morning.
 
12.17:22 ... waiting for ‘Select beneficiary bank’: Made a sandwich. I was just going to have peanut butter (quick to make), but decided I had time to do roast chicken with mayo, lettuce and sliced tomato, topped with freshly ground black pepper from the mill. (I was once tempted to buy one of those electric, time-saving pepper mills; glad I didn’t).

12.20:03 ... waiting for ‘Select branch name or branch code’: Went to the loo, as I had refilled and finished off second glass of tonic water. On return, made mistake of selecting to enter branch name (default option, so thought would be quicker than changing this to the ‘branch code’ option). Beneficiary’s bank was not listed in the drop-down menu selection, so had to go back and select the branch code option, wait for the default to change, and then enter the code.

12.22:44 ... waiting for ‘Advise beneficiary by mobile, fax or e-mail’: Went outside to smoke other half of cigarette. Used skimmer in left hand to fish a ‘Parktown Prawn’ off bottom of the swimming pool. (These bugs are revolting; they’re the size of a King prawn, and have great long feelers – if you stamp on them, they shoot poo in all directions, so I was glad this one had drowned ... or perhaps committed suicide, if it had been trying to log onto the internet today).

12.25:25 ... waiting for ‘Submit for review’: I read chapter one of ‘War and Peace’. (No, I didn’t really – I don’t have a copy).
12.28:06 ... waiting for ‘Confirm’: Stared at the ‘submit for review’ screen, reading and re-reading the information I had entered. What if I’d made a mistake? I’d already clicked on the ‘confirm’ button and could only watch the little wheel go slowly ‘round and the green bar crawl along the bottom, taking me to the irreversible “You have just transferred 20,000 rand to the ‘Save Parktown Prawns from Extinction Society’ . I don’t usually re-check my input, but what if frustrations (and distractions) had caused me to err?

12.30:47 ... waiting for ‘Request received and beneficiary notified’: Stared at the confirmed details, and found all was correct, so went off to get myself a glass of wine to celebrate.

12.33:28 ... waiting for ‘Log off’: Banged forehead repeatedly on keyboard, but scared to do so too hard in case I didn’t log off correctly, thereby leaving our bank account details open to the world ... but probably not to anyone in Johannesburg, that is. If the internet is as slow for the hackers here as it is for me, they’d be quicker robbing a bank the old-fashioned way.

12.36:09 on Friday, December 3, 2010

If you’re reading this, it means I was eventually successful in sending it to Karl at www.secretandalucia.com and downloading it to my blog, www.thequickbrownfox.org.

Perhaps the efforts I exerted in doing so will warrant another story?

To create link towards this article on your website,
copy and paste the text below in your page.

<style type="text/css"><!--.quote {width:350px; padding: 6px; border: solid 1px #456B8F; font: 10px helvetica, verdana, sans-serif; color: #222222; background-color: #ffffff}.quote a {font: 13px arial, serif; color: #003399; text-decoration: underline}.quote a:hover {color: #FF9900; }//--></style><div style="float:left;padding:5px;"><img src="http://www.secretandalucia.com/guadiaro-valley/images/stories/blogs/online-banking.jpg" width="120" alt="" /></div><div class="quote"><a href="http://www.secretandalucia.com/guadiaro-valley/blogs/carolyn-emmetts-blog/529-a-keyboard-imprint-on-my-forehead.html" target="_blank">A Keyboard Imprint On My Forehead</a><br />Friday, 03 December 2010<br /> I AM only just recovering from spending 32 minutes and nine seconds on my laptop to make an internet bank transfer. There are only 12 steps...<div align="right" style="width:350px"><p style="text-align:right;">© 2012 - <a href="http://www.secretandalucia.com/guadiaro-valley/" target="_blank">Secret Andalucia - Guadiaro Valley, near Ronda</a></p></div></div>

Preview :

A Keyboard Imprint On My Forehead
Friday, 03 December 2010
I AM only just recovering from spending 32 minutes and nine seconds on my laptop to make an internet bank transfer. There are only 12 steps...

© 2012 - Secret Andalucia - Guadiaro Valley, near Ronda

Powered by QuoteThis © 2008