Where in the world am I today?: Woke up in Trinidad, will go to bed in North Vancouver
I posted recently about my email addiction but I think I could take this a step further and admit to being a bit of an internet-aholic. I’m so spoiled at home to have a flat fee 24/7 WiFi connection that, when I leave home for work and I don’t have, I somehow feel cheated and require a day or two to tone down my web dependency and get back on track with other aspects of life. Things like oh I don’t know… practicing juggling, working on bits for my show, enjoying the sights and sounds of where ever it is I happen to be, but it’s not long before the monkey on my back returns and I’m looking for my hit of internet-goodness!
On the contract I’ve just finished aboard the GRAND Princess you can access the internet, but you buy an internet card for twenty bucks and it comes with a pre-determined time limit and it seems incredibly easy to burn through those minutes at an alarmingly fast rate. Especially as the connection speed isn’t the fastest in the world you end up chewing up more minutes in the accomplishment of tasks that on a speedier connection take a fraction of the time. I try to limit my use of those minutes to the very basic essentials. Zip online, download new emails, send off any I’ve written while off line then disconnect. A to B To See you later – done!
Got to Aruba on the ship recently and walked off with my computer and my iPod touch and went for a bit of a walk around prospecting for WiFi. My iPod Touch made this a bit easier because, as a hand held device with built in WiFi, I was able to check for a signal every half block or so in the hopes of finding an connection I could free-base from… Crack open my laptop, tap into the connection and get my fix of internet until my laptop’s battery died.
There is an element of piracy to the affair and yet it seems harmless enough to track down a connecting that’s being given away and sneak aboard the WiFi Love Train… A modern day prospector for whom the pack mule and pick axe or yore have been replaced by an iPod and a laptop… There’s gold in them there ports I tells ya… WiFi GOLD!
