Curse you, Wissenkerke!

Yesterday afternoon I scrapped my plan to go home early to watch the inauguration and instead went to a cafe near work with a small group of people. Someone had called them to ask if they would put on the inauguration for us and they said it was no problem, so we headed over around 5:30. I imagined the grand moment of Obama being sworn in and us all cheering; yeah, this would be better than watching it on my own at home.

We got to the cafe and found their tv on already to Nederland 1 (boo), but they didn't have the sound on, music was playing instead. We asked if they could change to the sound from the tv and they said they would put it on when he began his speech. Hrm, not really what we were hoping for. Around 5:45 we asked again if they could turn on the sound, and they said "in a few moments". Gah. But soon enough they turned off the music and turned up the volume of the tv -- which did absolutely nothing. Various people from the cafe began fiddling with the remotes and they could not get the sound to come on. We were not happy. So, as the prayer was given, and as the oath was made, and as Obama was introduced as president, we were not really watching, but instead desperately trying to think of a way to get sound to go with the picture we had (I suppose I'm glad we at least had the Dutch subtitles). One girl called her husband and asked him to put the phone next to the tv at home, but then her phone didn't have speaker. Someone else tried to see if they could get online with their laptop. She did eventually -- after buying a wifi access card from the cafe. In the end, we saw most of the speech with 4 of the group huddled around the laptop (which didn't have the most powerful top volume) watching a delayed video stream, and me listening to the girl's mobile that had the connection to her house and the sound from her tv. It was an interesting way of going about things, I guess. The cafe people never did manage to get the sound to work on their tv.