Wednesday, August 05, 2009

T.I.V. Tuesday

Tomorrow we will not have internet access. Evidently, THE cable, yes, that is singular, that runs under the Caribbean sea from the USA to Venezuela has been damaged and is in need of emergency repair. This cable must be a wonder indeed. Millions of people linked into one mass of apparently vulnerable wiring all at the mercy of the tides and hopefully accommodating sea creatures.

Wednesday has been designated as repair day and the engineers will head out to the middle of nowhere large body of water and begin, what one can only assume must be, the painstaking process of bringing THE cable back to full life. During this process which supposedly will consume merely 4 hours (don't expect to hear from me before Friday) the entire country and surrounding region (i.e. Aruba, Curacao, Trinidad & Tobago etc.) will be without internet service.

The questions I have are 1) how was the cable damaged...I envision a very large anchor falling in precisely the wrong spot or a pod of mischievous whales wreaking havoc?; 2) if the repairs are so urgent why has service not heretofore been affected?; 3) since when does the government of Chavezland have the courtesy to report problems of this nature in advance? Which leads me to 4) is the world at last coming to an end?

This situation has given me pause. Of course I know that internet doesn't just appear in my house by magic or because I click my heels together and fervently wish. I know there is no Google Fairy or Firefox Sprite...but, I always just assumed there was more to internet service than just a big 'ole cable and hundreds of millions of little cables all snaking their way to the fiber optic mother ship. Is there no redundancy in the system, one wayward octopus and we short circuit? And, really, even if there is just the one cable, wouldn't we all be better served to pay the engineers overtime to fix it on the weekend than to shut down several economic systems in the middle of the week? Economics is not my forte by a long shot, but isn't this sort of like not preventing a pilot's strike at Christmas? Of course, "this is Venezuela" where nonsensical is de rigueur. I have to remind myself about the former bus driver who is the current foreign minister and his common law wife who is head of the Senate. I have to remind myself that we have been without sugar, in a country that grows sugarcane, for more than 2 months. I have to remind myself that last Friday Chavez nationalized the ports and then handed them over to the Cubans to run. I suppose with these conditions in mind I should be grateful that there is a cable at all and that we aren't expected to make sacrifices to Yahoo! in the hopes that he will feel magnanimous and grant us access to Amazon.com.

15 comments:

Annemarie said...

Holy cow. You are a great writer, "mischievous whales wreaking havoc" Good stuff!

Tristan said...

I too loved the bit about the whales! You are too cute!

The Songer said...

This was an awesome post! It got me too thinking about "1 cable"? Too funny! along with all your other comments about that crazy country!

Lane said...

you are so funny...I like the pray to Yahew, i mean, yahoo part. So clever..
miss you!
~ Lane

Hazen5 said...

I would love to live somewhere far, far away! But then I think about that single cable. I need more than one cable in my life right now!

robin marie said...

there is only A cord!!!! one, singular cord!? that is pretty funny/awesome. good luck with that!

dmckay said...

Hi, I'd love to ask you a few questions via email about the foreign service which I'm considering. If you wouldn't mind. Myself, wife and kids live in SLC, Utah.
email: dmckay@rmmonument.com

calibosmom said...

I find all of this quite facinating. I love your point of view of what is going on. We would never hear of this on CNN.com...and apparently neither would you. Sorry for your 4 hour shut down.

Cassidy said...

Patience, my friend. Apparently is all about patience. Just think how much more patient you are having lived where you've lived...at least it's just one more year.

Lauren in GA said...

I agree with Annemarie...you are a great, great writer.

You've got to watch it when whales wreak havoc.

Here's to hoping there will be no stay octopi...you need to be able to blog.

K. Crisler said...

FYI... Lyman was not wearing man capri's (thank heavens) although now that you mention it I am going to tell him that his shorts are so big that they look like man capri's. Maybe just maybe this will encourage him to buy shorts that fit??? As for the ugly jacket he was wearing in those pictures, it came out of his friends DI pile he had in his trunk. Hope you guys are doing good, we miss you. WHY DO YOU HAVE TO LIVE SO FAR AWAY????

Ilene said...

I love your international reports.

It is a funny situation but also so, so disturbing.

Hey, I'm ready for the world to end. I don't want to live through my children having to date.

Donna said...

Hey, thanks for stopping by my blog - it's how I found you. And funnily enough, just last week I ran across an old article on cables in Slate Magazine. http://www.slate.com/id/2183693/
Good luck over there - here in China our internet is routinely messed with - fun stuff.

Sandi said...

I'm laughing, I'm laughing, I'm still laughing.

terahreu said...

If it makes you feel any better, when I lived in Dubai the exact same thing happened. I shared all the same frustrations as you did. A cable? Underwater? Accidently cut? How does that even happen? It was out for a week.

Also, Qatar's internet stinks. I had a better connection in Nepal, when I had electricity. Amazing how some countries function! Gotta love overseas living!

 

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