Surviving sans Internet

Hi again from me!

Following an almost 10 month forced hiatus I have found another way to access my site (oh joy, bliss and cartwheels etc) and will be writing weekly again from now on as I am using a computer in my local Library (why didn’t I think of this before!). But hey, talk about a curve ball!!!

So anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, forced, and I say that because the idyllic semi-rural coastal area to which I’ve relocated (regular readers may recall I was just about ready to sell my soul for such an opportunity) has everything I could possibly want out of life…everything that is except Internet and as spanners in the works go, this one was a biggie for me and in typical spanner-in-the-works fashion, I didn’t realise this would be the case until after I had packed up cats, chooks, kid still living at home (at the time) and all my other wordly possessions and shifted here!

Talk about a dousing with a bucket of icy water! I arrived to find I would have No Internet. No Internet!!! How was I supposed to survive without access to my website, my email account, my Facebook page and every other darned thing I do online???! Did I react like an addict denied her fix? Yes. Burst into a flood of tears and invective? Yes. Throw myself on the floor and have a total Oh-My-God-How-Am-I-Supposed-To-Cope-With-This moment over the fact that this pretty location that was the answer to all my prayers was also a telecommunications backwater where even mobile phone service was iffy at the best of times? Well yes, I did do that too, except I rejected the floor (concrete) in favour of the couch because I was already in enough pain so why add to it with possible physical injury?

Well okay, so I considered a leap from the mezzanine over having no access to Facebook but dismissed it because it might be messy. I hate mess.

So it looked like my only means of communication with the outside world (and its only access to me) was via a non-broadband supporting landline, which would have been fine except that it was so unreliable I eventually had it disconnected. The cables here are shot but not listed for replacement because one day in the far distant future the National Broadband Network (NBN) will find its way here which would make cable replacements obsolete. Fortunately there is a spot on the hill at the back of the property where I can get a signal on my mobile and on a good day there’s even one on the dining table where I can actually pick up a call. I put the caller on loudspeak so I can hear them and shout really loudly into the phone so they can hear me and so long as I don’t otherwise touch that phone or move it so much as half a millimetre from that spot, I can have some kind of conversation. But it doesn’t work all the time.

Funny thing is, I seem to have unexpectedly adapted somehow to living in a world of severely restricted communications. It has been months now since I have felt the manic desire to kill, maim, and/or put nasty hexes on Telstra in general and have even come to (almost) appreciate the peaceful lifestyle experience (having moved past the hysteria) that a communications black spot can offer. The native coastal bushland is very pretty, the beaches are within spitting distance and the wildlife a joy and if I’m not careful I may even find myself out on the deck one early morning…

…chanting Ohm into the first rays of the rising sun…

…to the tinkling of the windchime…

…with no jangling devices to spoil the moment…

(enter incense and temple bell thingies)