Smart gadgets and Dumb people

This is a stressful mental note to myself. It is a lesson about life: NEVER MOVE FAR ABOVE OR AHEAD OF THE REST OF SOCIETY.

Ever since my ancient laptop crashed, my concept of self as defined by that laptop and the rantings produced on it and spewed online, has been in crisis. That laptop should probably be placed in a museum as a piece of contemporary Papua New Guinea blogging history. Anyway, some folks may be glad it died.

Obviously, that death has, meant that changes were necessary. I sell betel nut, which allows me to make more money than teachers, nurses, security guards, RD Tuna workers and shop assistants but the urge to splurge is so great I am for all intents and purposes broke. So wadayaknow, I needed help with technology. Fortunately, I had help.

Now this is where things get interesting. I am now perhaps one of those rare buai sellers who walks around with an iPAD.

So it's Saturday morning and as I'm ripping off the packaging and examine the tablet device I realize the poor folks who invested in it were ripped off. The device wasn't activated and did not include a micro-sim although it almost cost as much as the Taj Mahal. 

I rushed out of the house in search of a micro-sim in Port MOresby's concrete and barbed wire jungle. 

My first stop was Telikom PNG who as usual were always there to show their faces but lacked substance, i.e. they didn't sell micro- sims despite claiming to run a 3G and 4G network.

Next stop was the Digicel shop. Whilst they were selling tablet devices and smart phones, they weren't smart enough to sell micro-sims.

Sadly, both telcos proved that whilst phones are getting smarter, some folks working for the telcos are getting dumber.

In the end an incision had to be done into the silicon flesh of an ordinary sim card and it's torso excised into a microsim. The PNG made micro-sim was then inserted into the iPAD.

Having dealt with the issue of finding a micro-sim, the next issue was to activate the device. A lot of Internet airtime went into downloading iTunes, installing it on a borrowed laptop and activating the iPAD.

But my woes are far from over. I need an iTunes Gift Card to use in order to activate Apps on the tablet device. I also have to deal with Digicel's crap coverage of my area, which results in a constipated Internet connection.

The iPAD is certainly a very useful weapon of mine but sadly, the rest of society may not have the same level of technological advancement. HIccups are as such inevitable.

I now have to content with ripp-off data rates. Those who use the argument that PNG lacks the economy of scale to justify data price reduction, should look no further than the rates amongst our neighbors.

Sent from my iPad