Internet musing

Here in Balhaf, the internet connection speeds at home and office are equally slow. I used to think it was due to our remote location, but I have come to realize that the whole country of Yemen is slow, connectivity-wise. I spent an overnight recently in the Movenpick Hotel in Sana’a – arguably the most luxurious hotel in the country – and the internet was snailish there too.

To put things into perspective, if you remember the early days of dial-up connection and Compuserve, Earthlink, Mindspring, Prodigy, OnRamp (anyone remember OnRamp?), those connections were faster and more reliable than here. At one point, after a year and a half of internet misery, I happened to click on a non-descript folder off to the left in my email server and discovered that fully half of the emails I had composed during my first 18 months had not been sent due to a “time out” error or because I turned off my computer while the message was still in the pipe, including several heart wrenchers after my mother died.

One adjusts though, and I have developed a routine of household tasks that I can attend to instead of serving a cyber prison sentence waiting for something to happen after pressing the “enter” button. For examples: I put away the laundry (sidenote: daily laundry service picked up and delivered doesn’t suck); push-ups; brush teeth or floss - I am unquestionably among Yemen’s top 5 percentile of tooth flossers. I water the tiny patch of Bermuda grass that I am cultivating by the front steps. I keep my guitar on a stand near the computer so I can play it while watching the hour glass in the monitor. Downside: my guitar sound has devolved to a distracted monotone. Upside: I can play lots of the error sounds from the control panel library; I have 300 versions of the “time out” sound. You can’t really read a book while continually checking for onscreen developments, and, in the other extreme, you might get engrossed in what you’re reading and discover that you have been internet timed out, which means you have to repeat the hour glass routine.

Just one more computer comment (because I intended this just to be intro material for something more meaty): there is a governmental censoring agency: Yemen.net. Not infrequently, and sometimes when you least expect it you will be visited by the tan and brown Yemen.net screen of death. References to sex will bring out brownie, as will any of the Carlin 7. Atonement costs you a cold reboot. One assumes that a negative reference to a certain historical religious Arab person will trigger a lockup, or worse. Then sometimes the censor shows up and you can’t figure out what code of conduct you have transgressed. Probably a political or religious mis-translation on the part of Yemen.net is the best I can guess.

Mis-translations are a way of life here. You learn to be v-e-r-y concise when issuing instructions to HVEs (Indians, Philippinos, Koreans and Nigerians, mostly) that you cannot afford to screw up. Hand gestures are extremely useful. Among the ex-pats, english is required as the official language of meetings and correspondence. I am one of perhaps 50 native english speakers (most are british or canadians) on this project, so I find myself very frequently in a meetings listening to a french manager explaining something in very broken english to a room full of widely mixed, non-english mother tongues. One time someone described a smashed toe as an injury to the “foot finger.” I looked around the room and noted that a british guy and I were the only ones smiling. I actually learn a lot of francais by the mistakes they make when they literally translate.

Here’s another curious mis-translation that I can kindof understand, but not really. I solicited proposals from the local tribes for garbage collection services. One of the sections required a description of the ultimate disposal method for the non-recyclable waste. Out of the 12 proposals received, three of them used the term “holocaust” to denote “incinerator.” These proposals were from different tribes who were competing against each other, so I wouldn’t expect plagiarism. Don’t know. Weird.

None of the foregoing was particularly meaty. Saved for another day.