It's official: the underwater pipe responsible for my Internet connection's international link [:: has been crushed ::] and unusually, the papers didn't follow up with their usual whistle-blowing. In fact, the dearth of news report regarding the incident arouses suspicion: it isn't every day that submarine cables heavily tasked with connecting an entire region to another get chopped without major wire agencies making at least a minor mention tucked deep within their website.
This disruption caused much angst amongst the telco's customers. Ping times rose 20 fold, to 19000 miliseconds, where previously pages snapped to screen within a quarter of a second. I tried online games on international servers, and watched with bored anticipation as my character went to his 16th consecutive death. My usual game mates were quite curious about my sudden suicidal strategy. Short of crushing the cable at home (thereby creating another crushed cable), I could only stick to stalking mudane forums to pass time.
Nobody else I know has the slightest interest in writing online. Their keyboards remain immaculate, with a few choice keys worn out from their favourite games. Mine looks like it was used as a substitute for a plate, courtesy of my persistent habit of dropping food in front of the computer, not that my mouth is defective or anything... There was a time long ago I asked my inner circle about their online habits, and came away thinking that I was the one with the habits.
Back to the cut cable: it brought me a new insight inside the securely hidden bowels of Singaporean society. Where tourists don't visit on their casual trips around town are common hang outs for the new generational hippies, innocuous they are in their dark leather suits in the hot and humid tropical weather, dazzling each other with multiple shiny metal studs jabbed meticulously onto the smooth cloth. One of them looked at me as I was observing the group even as he wound a roll of tape around his leather boot. The McDonalds outlet was quite crowded, but I could pick out the members of their group with their outlandish tastes, even as I ducked underneath my burger with their occassional stares. A few moments later, after a mini ice-cream war, which left the restaurant cleaners with a half-an-hour of non-stop clean up work, the gang left, probably to another quieter locality for their boring juvenille acts.
In case you were blinded by this post's sudden spot of brilliance, here's [:: the inspirational blog ::].
I need to rest my weary mind now: the fiery forum topic I started about those guy's leather fetish really squeezed the liquid out of my proverbial sponge. Insufficient water intake was probably part of the act too.
[::: Comments :::]
