Don’t worry Mum I’ve not suddenly taken up heroin or
anything, but I have realised since coming here how much I depend on wifi and
the mobile internet back home.
I was horrified to find out that wifi is very scarce here
and most people still have wired internet in their homes (in this part of the
city at least). A feeling of shock washed over me when I was told the bad news
– how would I check my facebook and twitter every 5 minutes? What if I wanted
to put something on Instagram? Would I have to go without Foursquare for 3
months?!
What followed can only be described as an addict’s response
to being made to go cold turkey. I unconsciously checked my phone during the
first couple of days hoping that some kind of magic would deliver those sweet,
sweet nuggets of mostly useless information that I found myself craving. I
frequently scanned for networks wherever I went; I thought I might get a
connection in McDonalds, but I was wrong. I was out of the loop and I hated it.
I even started
bargaining with myself – if I turned on my roaming it would only cost £8 per
megabyte I thought. If I’d carried on down that road I’d have already sold
a couple of my less essential internal organs and I’d be trawling the Osaka
red-light district in the giblet-hugging boxers I bought in China trying to
sell myself to the more partially sighted and desperate perverts in order to
fuel my data habit.
I’d tried to connect to a very weak wifi signal, which
appeared to be from some form of hotel, out of sheer desperation over the
weekend, but nothing came of it. That was until I woke up to a shed-load of
messages on Tuesday morning. I think my phone picks it up in the early hours
when it’s not being used because it’s useless by the time I wake up. In a way
I’m glad though. I can still check everything on the computer at work - I get
the exact same amount of mindless drivel, except I get it in one big chunk now
instead of one little piece every few minutes. Without being constantly online
you begin to realise that the sky is indeed blue and there are some interesting
things to see in the world every day.
Who knows, I might learn to turn off my phone now and again
when I’m back in the UK. But then again, I might not. A person needs to know
what Zach Braff had for breakfast.
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