It’s New Year’s Eve. The last day of 2008. I’m getting ready to go to the hotel. Hmm—what CD should I play in the car for this special occasion? I scan through my collection and settle on Sir Colin Davis’ extremely fine performance of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony (Choral) with the Staatskapelle Dresden. Universal brotherhood and all that stuff…it does make me feel good all over.
Come to think of it, I believe that the Internet has actually helped to create a sense of brotherhood in us humans. True, there’s some bad stuff in it, but certainly the good stuff triumphs. For instance, if you’re having a problem with your computer, one of the first steps would probably be to do a Google search and see whether other people have experienced the same thing and whether or not a solution has been found. Or perhaps you’d look it up in one of the thousands of forums (most of them are free to view and to sign up). Or failing that, IM (Instant Message) a friend to ask for help. Or use email (teenagers consider email old-fashioned nowadays).
The fact is, the Internet has become a godsend. Which is why I’ve become a little annoyed as the Internet has been sluggish since before Christmas. Seems that some undersea cables were severed near Italy, causing Internet services to be disrupted. It’s odd that Malaysia would be affected since you’d think our traffic would be re-routed via the Pacific. Now comes the big bummer—our traffic to North America is disrupted as well! Grr—but patience, patience. At first my ISP mentioned that everything would be back to normal by December 31, 2008. Now they’re saying it’ll take a few more days—hopefully by January 4, 2009. I can hardly wait.
Fortunately I can still access my blog and web sites, although they are hosted in the States. If not—!@#%!! The last time Internet services were disrupted was about two years back, when an undersea earthquake off the coast of Taiwan caused havoc. That created an immense slowdown in Internet services here. That was an unpleasant experience, to say the least.
Yes, call me an Internet junkie—millions of other people belong to this club as well. And I almost forgot—Happy New Year!
Tags: Beethoven, Google, Internet