Saturday, September 29, 2007

My Biggest Frustration

9/27/07

It’s electronic technology. If we didn’t have any electronic gizmos here, I think I would enjoy Samoa even more. But we do, and that’s the source of my frustration.

My lab top computer power plug hardly ever works. It could be the male part, the female part, the wiring, the transformer, etc. I spend hours wiggling the connection in hopes of finding the “sweet spot”. Whenever I do, it seems a bird flying by can cause it to lose power again. Sometimes the “force” is with me and power just flows for no apparent reason.

My U.S. cell phone has a broken microphone. I can hear desperate “Hellos” as the caller wonders why I don’t respond. They call back and get the same result. Now no one calls me, but it may be for reasons other than my cell phone.

Email or specifically Yahoo email is a real problem on the computer the Peace Corps has provided for all the volunteers on Savaii. Yahoo just won’t allow us to open, send or reply to email. We have complained without success. Someone said this type of problem is due to all the security filters placed on government computers. I guess there is some consolation knowing we are helping to fight the War on Terror. But what about Gmail or Hotmail, or MSN, why not them too?

Foreign governments and good hearted NGO’s ship computers on a regular basis to Samoan schools and telecenters. There they sit mainly because no one knows how to work them and no one is around to teach them. Soon they break and become trophies.

Maybe the source of my frustration is not that electronic technology is fallible, but there is no place to get this stuff fixed or to find parts. You just have to live with it broken, or do without.

Time for a midday nap. Ah, fa’asamoa. Now that’s the life!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi Nick, I suspect your intermittent power problem is caused by overheating.... this can happen almost immediately in a laptop.... I'm sure you do not have any compressed air in a can, but try to blow the dust off the vents in the computer and if you can get to the "heat sink" on the cpu, use a qtip or something similar to dislodge the dust. Elevate the laptop from the top of the desk with a couple of sticks or rocks to get the air flowing through the vents.... How do you connect to the internet? Is it cellphone or hardwire?
Pat Landy