Day: July 13, 2009

It never ceases to amaze me that I’m able to access internet from my remote corner in Antique, even if the connection is so slow and intermittent.

I have always dreamed of being able to file my stories from our place in Guisijan while listening to the chirping the birds surrounded by orchids, bromeliads, heleconias, lirios and milflores. It gives me so much pleasure that it has become a reality.

Our barrio has come a long way from my elementary school days when the only telephone in the barrio was a public phone, in a black box - double the size of a shoe box- installed in the balcony of a community official.

The reception must have been bad because the official would be shouting when talking on the phone. Passersby would hear the conversation. Usually, it was an emergency call like asking for an ambulance.

I remember overhearing a call one early evening for an ambulance for a pregnant woman who was attending to the wake of her brother. The next day, we learned that mother and the unborn baby never made it to the hospital in the capital town of San Jose, an hour away by car from our place. It became a triple wake which the whole community mourned.

The coming of the internet was preceded by cell phone signal just about six or seven years ago. Before that, the few cell phone users in our barrio (usually family members of Filipino overseas workers) would go to an elevated area, some two kilometers away, where they could get better signals

When my mother was alive, I used to go home every month. Sending my columns was a problem. I would write them by hand and my uncle would fax them in San Jose.

I tried doing it in the internet café in San Jose but making the trip takes a lot of time. One time, the jeepney that I took had to bring a passenger with several sacks of rice to an interior barangay. Another side trip to another barangay to bring a balikbayan passenger. The trip that normally took one-hour stretched to three hours. The two- hour session in the internet café became a whole day undertaking.

With a broadband equipment, I can enjoy the peace and quiet of barrio life, tend my garden and still meet my deadlines. Oh well, not all the time. Last Thursday, Globe Visibility was “No service” for several hours. Every time I tried I got the message that “A connection to the remote computer could not be established, so the port used for this connection was closed.“ It was past my 6 p.m deadline when I finally got connected.
I deal with the agonizingly slow speed by multi-tasking. I pray the rosary or read a book. (Does Smartbro give better service?)

Aside from being able to file stories while on vacation, another reason why I’m happy about the availability of internet in our barrio is the opportunities that it could open to the young, especially the students. Just by pressing a key, they will learn new things .Just a click of the mouse, their world will expand.

I hope that with the opening of knowledge windows, they will learn that they can dream big. Bigger than just becoming domestic helpers in Hongkong, Singapore and Middle East countries.

Right now, I don’t think the barrio public high school, which has a few computers, can include in their budget the cost of internet access. But it’s a start.

I have a new dream: free wifi in our barrio.

Wait, there’s more!: Get cheap domain & hosting from plogHost Powering Ellen’s blog since 2005.