Some Things That *Aren't* Better in Australia

by Kelly

Did you read my last post about the storm in Brunswick Heads (you should, nice pics!). I've been trying to get that post up for 3 days. The fault has not been with the author. It's been with the system of internet allocation in Australia.

If you're reading this from the US, your experience is that you pay for (or get free) internet access for a prescribed period of time -- couple of hours, days, maybe a month -- and how you use that time is up to you. Read email, post pictures, comment on Facebook, watch a movie, cruise YouTube, Skype with your friends, play games, whatever.

The places we've stayed have all said they have free wifi -- however, here when a place gave us "free" wifi, it's been for a defined period of time (2 or 3 hours per 24 hour period) and for a certain amount of GBs of data / downloads.

Take a look at the last post I mentioned above. Took me about 45 minutes to get that written and posted. How many GBs of data do you think I needed to create that post and upload those pics? I have no idea either but I know that for 3 days I have exceeded the data limits on the "free" wifi every time I've tried to create that one post. With just those photos (which are stored on my hard drive). No video, no Skype chats, no online games. Just photos.

And the extra sweet part? I never knew I'd exceeded the limit till something quit working. That's not because I'd just exceeded the limit but some time in the last, oh, 20 minutes I'd exceeded the limit so anything I was trying to save in an online application hadn't been saved in the last, oh, 20 minutes. I hadn't been told that. I just suddenly realized some function wasn't working correctly and I didn't know why.

I'm finally staying in a house with "free" wifi the way I, as an American, understand "free" wifi so I've finally been able to get that (bleep)(bleep) post loaded! I remember this system driving Jeff batshit crazy when we moved here, trying to figure out how much GBs of data we normally use (we had no freakin' clue).

So if you're coming to Australia and are choosing places because they have "free" wifi, you may want to ask what that specifically entails!

Tomorrow: what they mean when they say they have "air conditioning".