Mobile computing – not quite there yet :(

Hello world! You are receiving this missive from the Greensborough Plaza Shopping Centre in lovely downtown Greensborough, an outer-ish suburb of Melbourne, Australia.

For the first time ever, I’m composing this post on my new laptop via a free wi-fi connection that would make dialup cringe in shame.

It’s taken me half an hour to connect and get this far. 😦

To be fair, this is the second week of the school holidays and the centre is quite full, but I can’t see anyone else madly trying to use the wi-fi connection. So either a lot of hidden people are hogging the wi-fi, or the wi-fi connection is terrible.

Forgive me if I sound bitter, but I bought this laptop in the hope of being able to work on the great Australian sci-fi novel while out and about. Unfortunately, I’m using sync.com to connect to Innerscape [so I don’t have multiple versions of the story floating around], and sync.com requires a functional internet connection to work. And this isn’t it.

The one good thing about sitting in a great big shopping centre, bitching about the wi-fi connection is that the latte is excellent. It’s so good, in fact, that I haven’t completely given up all hope of one day being able to work while sipping lattes. All I have to do is wait for the NBN to come Greensborough.

For those not familiar with Australian abbreviations, NBN stands for National Broadband Network and was the Rudd Labor government’s brainchild to drag Australia into line with the rest of the developed world [we have terrible broadband and it’s horribly expensive].

Originally, the NBN was supposed to be bleeding edge technology that would bring fibre optic cables right into the home. Had this gone ahead, it would have meant blisteringly fast broadband. For once, we would have been ahead of the game and our broadband would have become the envy of the modern world.

Then politics raised its ugly head and we got NBN mark 2. We would still get fibre optics, but no longer right into the home. Instead, old school copper would connect the fibre optic cable to the house.

Apparently, NBN mark 2 would save a lot of government money that could then be spent on Naura and Manus Island, turning refugee maltreatment into an artform. The downside, however, would be a reduction in that blistering speed I mentioned. A bit like taking the water from a high pressure hose and funneling it through an ordinary garden hose.

You get the picture.

Speaking of which, I don’t dare post a pic because I have no idea how long it will take for text to be uploaded, much less graphics. But fear not, picture me sitting here, sipping a latte and snarling at all the kiddies running by. I’m not breathing fire yet, but a few smoke alarms have gone off in reaction to the smoke coming from my ears.

Have a wonderful day and may your internet connection be nothing like mine.

Meeks

p.s. the upload went surprisingly quickly. I guess only downloads are awful.