Anyway--my IP is from Panama. You guys in the civilized world, by which, I mean the world with Internet above 1Mbps...you have it so easy. You call your Internet provider and they show up in some semblance of a uniform between 8am and 4pm (this is your only sacrifice, being sequestered for a day waiting for the Comcast guy to show), and then get blazing fast 'net for about $30/month. You also get somebody to bitch at when things don't work, although it's usually your fault for not resetting the modem, as they helpfully remind you. Or you go to Starbucks or the laundromat and log on with your latte and suds. Or you steal that shit from one of the surprisingly high number of neighbors who doesn't know how to password protect their router. Whatever the route, you get it, and once you do, it's fast. Fast enough that you can download a CD before turning around and finding it on your shelf. It's actually preferable to any search, the instant gratification of google and go.
Here, it's different. I have a microwave antennae on my roof, picking up some beam that shoots 10 miles or so across the Golfo Dulce from its hub on la Frontera, where it is split into fractions of itself and sold at a value approaching unobtanium by an unresponsive and uncaring "provider" with no known phone number and a 4 week appointment lead time that is, as of last count, 15% attended by the service rep. I get, on a good day, 800Kbps downstream and about 110Kbps up. On a bad day, an email takes 5 minutes to send, if it goes at all. And what do I pay for all this? $150/month. This is actually down from $375(!!!!)/month, all because Instituto Costarricense Electricidad (ICE), the state electric/internet/phone monopoly has entered the fray with a 3G system of about the same speed for the shockingly low price of $25/month. Unfortunately, it doesn't work for shit, but it has put the fear of G-d into "That Asshole Ronald," my internet guy, so I thank them for that.
My point, in all this, is that when, after a 2 year hiatus, I log into my Blogger account, I find it speaking to me in Spanish. Because it thinks I am a Panamanian, and doesn't really want to give me an option to chose otherwise. That's cool. I guess. I mean, I do speak Spanish. But Internet Spanish is different from what's spoken by the people, with its own colloquialisms. Suprimir, for example, means delete. Why don't they use "eliminar" which is what any person actually speaking Spanish would use? And "borrado," which means erased as far as I know, seems to mean saved, or maybe I'm wrong and this whole post has actually been deleted by the whim of Blogger Español. No se.
I guess it's a test of fluency, and I'm tooling along with a Gentleman's C.
