How sad that someone in my field has to live without decent internet access. Take note: DECENT.
Yes, I've been gone for a while. Yes, I haven't updated my Multiply, Facebook, Friendster, Plurk and Twitter in almost a month. Yes, it's sad because, aside from losing karma in Plurk (I've probably lost my dancing banana again), I've also lost a lot in terms of updates, keeping in touch and what not. I can't even log into my YM to chat up my friends and colleagues.
See it's quite simple. My home ISP sucks. And there's nothing I can do about it.
Thankfully, there's a net cafe outside our place (short walk but hey I need the exercise anyway), and, for emergencies like today, it's a welcome retreat. Had doubly urgent files to send and my ISP, as usual... FAIL!
The one thing that got me the second I got to the net cafe though was the number of people actually hanging out here. There are about 40 stations here and only a handful are free. Second, there are people hanging out in the coffee tables, not even using the internet... just hanging out. Third, there are only two bookmarks on the browser: Friendster and YouTube. And last but not least, the girl behind me is talking to someone from the province via the available earphones with built in mic... via Yahoo Messenger.
That pretty much sums up the usage of the Pinoys in most net cafes. And it's quite interesting to see that the internet really is an invaluable part of a person's daily pastime. I see students, people in house clothes, gimmick clothes, office clothes and one in a nurse uniform. My guess is most of them dropped by the place beforedeciding to head home.
And the end cost? Php 20.00. Which is already expensive in these parts. And the net access is fast too... so definitely well worth the price of admission.
Just to fill you in though on my current status, aside from my home ISP making me go bonkers (I can't even send an excel file some hours of the day... I have to wait early morning to be able to do some real browsing), my Mac died on me. Yes. My new office-issue Mac which wasn't so new at all... went kaput. Hard disk was unreadable. All my data... gone. Furthermore, the temporary PC I have in the office is such a sad excuse for a PC that I can't even run powerpoint without my explorer hanging. Multiply Tabs in Mozilla are worse... they really crash the system. And my YM... blocked by the firewall.
So yes ladies and gentlemen, I've been hit by virtual karma... too much net browsing and the digital gods are telling me to slow the frick down.
Thank God for accessible net cafes. I'll be back... I'm going to tour the net cafes around the area and see which has the best... ambience!
(Repost from my
Cnet Asia Blog)
