Island time

My name is Jennifer and I'm addicted to the internet. There I said it. Now you can laugh at me for moving onto a boat and sailing away from civilization.


The thing is, when you're in civilization you don't notice that you're addicted. It's just normal to be online all the time, especially when you work with computers for a living. When we were still in the northern islands--near Bimini and Nassau--we had decent internet. Staniel Cay has internet but it's too expensive for our taste (as non-residents) except on occasion. We have 3G temporarily so we can get emails and weather but for the most part, we don't have internet. And it is slow. Here is the message on the login page for the local wi-fi:

Reminder:
This service uses a satellite uplink for all traffic. On its best day, it will seem slow compared to any land-based service. It's 22 thousand miles to the satellite, which means it's 44 thousand miles before your request hits the Internet, and 44 thousand for the data to come back. No matter how you slice it, 88 thousand miles may take more than a few seconds for a response. So remember, you're in the Central Exumas with the most beautiful water and Cay's anywhere on the planet. Fast Internet is available at most office buildings and cubicles in the states. Would you really want to trade where you are for a cubicle?

The secret to happy surfing on a slow network?
1. Click on the link
2. Take a drink of your Kalik [a local beer]
3. Repeat steps 1 and 2 above until network appears to have blazing speed.

Hm, good point. So anyway, if we don't respond to you right away, you'll know why.*

*By the way, many of our blog posts have been scheduled when we did have good internet. So even when it seems like we're on line, we're not really on line.