Monday, November 12, 2012

A Respite from the Internet in Portugalete

It can't be.

Because we are changing internet companies at my house in Getxo, we have been most unfairly left without wireless internet for several days. I think it's almost been four days at this point. Barbarity.

I can barely live like this. Because of this most unpleasant interruption in the transcurrence of my normal patterns of looking up random bullshit on wikipedia, my cell phone's 3G bill will certainly have gone up significantly. In addition, this evening, after sitting inside for a while, in the dark, I decided to take my trusty MacBook for a walk.

 I crossed La Ría de Bilbao in the hanging bridge of Puente Vizcaya, and for the past hour I have been ducking into bars trying to find one that has wifi. Finally, on a small backstreet in Portugalete - a most quaint callejón if I do say so myself - I found a bar with semi-functional wireless internet.

I am somewhere over there to the left, in a bar in an alley near that church. 
To be here on my laptop in a bar amongst drunken, socializing Basques is a novel thing indeed. There are many groups of people, and though I am not the only loner, I think I am the only lone person who is not a sad, old, alcoholic government employee drinking by himself. I am, however, a somewhat malaised, young, alcohol-in-relative-moderation-consuming, government employee drinking by myself.

But because I have my computer, that almost counts as having company. I have the world at my fingertips. Or at least, a staggeringly small and narrow-minded part of it, as long as I keep reading The Nation blogs.

The computer's screen turns my face blue.

I think I am going to do this more often though. Go to bars with my laptop. I need to make this commitment, even when we get wifi back at my house. I'm not going to lie, I am downloading a few episodes of Tremé right now, so that is my ulterior motive for being here.

Now, more and more people are coming in, and I am beginning to feel more than a little bit awkward. There is a golden retriever tied outside the bar's front window and he is staring at me intently, with a sizable stalactite of drool coming out of his smiling mouth. He has significantly added to my joy.

And how would he not?

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