IUCAA, 15 August 01
Before going shopping today (a torture for a shopaholic like me who has a credit card but enough saris and indian stuff to last her a long time), I went down to FC Road to find an Internet Café where I could type down these notes in peace and communicate with the rest of the world.
Cyberia, the Internet Café in which I spent a great many hours during the initial phase of my first stay here, is no more. I recall that they were about to move when I left town. After a lot of hunting around, I tracked down the present office. The closed door which greeted me gave no indication that an Internet Café was still part of their business plan (if anything was left of it at all).
Having tested two Internet Cafés during the afternoon, I daresay that Cyberia is no small loss to me. The people were friendly, technically competent, and above all, each computer booth came with plenty of keyboard and elbow room. All the places I saw this afternoon – and I saw many which I did not enter – seem to have adopted the cramped-cubicle-with-keyboard-in-drawer system. For somebody like me who enjoys resting elbows on table for a comfortable typing position, it is a complete disaster. Add to that my persistent tendinitis, which pokes a sore head out whenever I am sloppy in handling the mouse or attacking the keyboard, and you’ll get an idea how uncomfortable I was.
yes! I feel with you…and I know the keyboard problem. And your site was
unavailable for me until today (2001/august/20) 🙂
But anyhow, now there are a lot new things to read on your
site…exciting! And I wish I could read the french articles more
fluently.
Yes, really sorry for the downtime. There wasn’t anything I really could
do about it, though. Take your time to catch up with the reading!!
I had the opposite problem when I went on a month-long exchange trip to
Reunion island (anglicised name to avoid having to remember html special
characters…) in July. I normally type on an english qwerty keyboard. But
trying to write english emails to people at home, on a french keyboard –
not fun. It took me at least 3 emails to find the ‘(‘ symbol, and I was
always writing ‘qnd’ for ‘and’ and ‘Qmy’ for my sister’s name. I think I
must’ve adjusted though – when I got home I found the english key
positions strange for a while.