A Day In The Life Of A PC Technician – Day 16

A new den

In my last article in this series, A Day In The Life Of A PC Technician – Day 15, in August, I mentioned that I would be moving my workshop from the garage. Well, the day finally arrived when my wife’s son moved out last month to live in his own flat and the following day, I wasted no time in requisitioning his room. It had been on the cards for several months, so I was champing at the bit to acquire his room because frankly, the garage, whilst useful as a stop-gap after closing the shop, was not the most comfortable environment, being incredibly noisy. I also forgot to mention that it also has a downward slope of several degrees, which is fine for parking a motorcycle, but not for my posture.

• Catch up with all Marc’s articles in this series: A Day In The Life Of A PC Technician

But what has this got to do with PC tech, I hear you ask? Quite a lot actually. It means I can now write, repair computers and record/edit videos in peace and quiet without road fumes, noise and other crap coming in from the road. My new den also has air conditioning, a heater and an en suite bathroom with shower. That isn’t to say that I’ll be cutting myself off from the world, but you get the drift.

As I proved today, I can now record videos without the racket coming from the road and believe me, it’s a busy road, especially at rush hour. Modern microphones pick up everything and it’s always a good idea to turn off the radio, even if it is just a faint noise in the background. I learned this to my cost several times over with copyright claims in my YouTube account. So yes, I am revelling in the luxury of my own den/man cave/workshop and enjoying every minute of it.

A digital marriage

The pandemic has thrown challenges at all of us, but it has also changed the way we perform certain rituals, such as the bureaucracy and red tape involved with local authorities and government departments. Without boring you all to tears, my other half and I have been wanting to get married for quite some time. In fact, we put the wheels in motion about three years ago. It wasn’t a simple process in the first place because, although I’m a permanent resident of Argentina, I haven’t taken citizenship (and don’t intend to), but I am foreign and have been married before in a different country. Argentina has a long history of complicated bureaucracy, not least with regard to your identity and the proof of such. ID cards are compulsory of course and the process of proving the authenticity of all the documents required for me to be passed fit to marry in this country was long and often complicated. This involved visits to numerous embassies, consulates, rubber stampings and a lot of original documents with Hague Apostilles (legalisation of foreign documents) stuck on them.

Finally in March 2020, I managed to complete the process, with the final documents arriving via DHL one week after Argentina had gone into total lockdown. Needless to say that everything shut down completely as if the apocalypse had begun and only births and deaths were being handled at the local registry office. However, I noticed that a great many documents that previously had required a face to face encounter for signature witnessing had begun to slowly morph into online digital legalisation. Fast forward to August 2021 and, whilst meandering around the labyrinth of the central registry office website, purely by chance I came across a link directing me to a page for foreigners like me that needed approval to marry in Argentina. In short, what had become a marathon, then became a sprint as I feverishly scanned and uploaded my sheaf of documents, which were all approved within less than twenty four hours, an online wedding date booked in the city of Buenos Aires and we were finally married on the 22nd of October.

I suppose what I’m driving at here is that many of the bureaucratic nightmares and rubber-stampings can now be done online, at least in this country and one hopes that the trend continues, regardless of local/global health issues. It’s practically stress-free, doesn’t involve the tedium of travel and parking, and helps conserve one’s sanity.

My YouTube account

My YouTube account was demonetised on 2nd August for apparently stealing other people’s material and I wrote about this weird situation shortly afterwards in My YouTube Channel Has Been Demonetised Part 1 and I’ve taken a great deal of time to correct the situation which, if effective, I hope to update in Part 2.

—