While Singapore may be known for being well connected in terms of technology, the effect is diminished when some 300 hotel guests are trying to use the same internet connection each night. In my latest hotel room, the internet essentially becomes unusable from 8pm until I go to bed. Even working on my blog requires planning as just the WordPress admin screen takes minutes (!) to load. It takes me back to when I was in year 6 (1996 for those playing along at home) and seeing a tech’d up student teacher bring along his 7200 baud modem, dial into the internet and download the Disney home page which consisted of one small image advertising James and the Giant Peach. It took 6 minutes to get the whole image. It wasn’t an issue because the Internet in 1996 consisted 70% of X-Files fan pages. If I had access I would have had one**.
One thing I’ll gladly pay for each month is a good, strong, fast internet connection. It needs to be there, on any number of my devices straight away, and it needs to do anything I want it to do. It’s increasingly becoming where I get TV from (with the exception of bargain priced older shows that are massive downloads but low DVD cost), and I don’t like to wait for it. If I want to watch a movie and I’ve lent out the DVD, I need to be able to download it while I finish dinner and do the dishes. Or faster if I’m leaving the dishes for tomorrow*.
Hurry me back to my castle of endless and penetrating wifi, and let me know that when I hear the satisfying treble click of the ethernet cable into my Mac, that there shall be no waiting.
* Almost always.
** Instead I was the sysop of a Bulletin Board System (BBS). That’s a whole pile of nerd for another day***.
*** Sorry for the recursive footnotes, but did anyone use Geocities back when you had to choose a neighbourhood and a sub-neighbourhood for your site? I actually think I did have an X-Files blog on Geocities.