Orientation
Posted by marshall Sun, 27 Mar 2005 04:00:00 GMT
The drive to the cafe was fairly exciting. Apparently every road has three lanes: the left-hand one going in your direction, the right-hand one going in the other direction, and a passing lane in the middle. This is true regardless of how many cars can actually fit on the road. Many roads are really only one lane wide, which makes for a whole lot of weaving and honking. It's fun being a passenger with an experienced driver, but as in Medan, I wouldn't want to be the one driving.
Jeremy gave me a kind of tour around the UN compound and an overview of how the Internet Cafe worked, and then I went to work. Not that they had things for me to do right away, but there was a guy with an iBook in the cafe who was trying to figure out how to print, and as soon as they found out I had a PowerBook, I was designated as the one to help him.
After taking care of that, Phil and I went over to the Air Serv house to see about getting them connected to our network. In the past the internet cafe had a directional antenna pointing at the PACTEC house, so we could get broadband at the house. But then a few days ago Phil and Jeremy put up an omnidirectional antenna to provide better overall coverage. Since Air Serv is our partner in this whole thing, it seemed a good idea to get them connected to the network first. We went over and tried a couple of different antennas from their balcony, and when those didn't work, we tied the antennas to Ethernet cables and Phil climbed up on the top of the roof and hoisted them up. The women sitting on the patio of the house across the street were much amused by Phil's rooftop adventure. But we still didn't get the connection working.
After taking everything down, we came back to the cafe to pick up Jeremy and get some food. The mess hall was serving fried noodles, with ice cream for dessert. Jeremy was impressed and said they rarely had food as nice as that. After that we headed back to the PACTEC house for the night.
The PACTEC house is very well described on Dave Ketcham's blog, and I suggest reading that. As he says, it is. Dave says the water for showering is "cool", perhaps even refreshing after a warm day. But it actually just feels downright cold. It's kind of ironic, actually: the UN camp has hot water for washing your hands outside the mess hall at midday when cold water would feel better, and the house has cold water when warm water would be much less of a shock in the morning. Oh well.
Jeremy also demonstrated a kind of taser-flyswatter, which is basically an electrified badminton racquet that is used to attack unsavory insects. He said they used it on a spider once, and the spider curled up into a ball and started to smoke. It's probably considered a weapon in the US, but I sure wish I had one.
The Internet cafe is open Monday-Saturday, so this morning (Saturday) we went in to set it up. Then Phil headed out to do some testing of the wireless range, and Jeremy went to go get a haircut from a local barber. That left me to run the internet cafe for a few house. On-the-job training! :-) After a few hours they came back to the cafe, and I went out with Phil to do some more testing. We managed to get a successful connection just past the Air Serv house in a swampy field, surrounded by cows.
Tonight there was a kind of "going-away party" for Jeremy and Phil, as Jeremy is leaving tomorrow and Phil will leave on Wednesday. Patar and Dede worked on preparing a big meal, with noodles, chicken, rice, goat-on-a-stick, spiced potatoes, and other delicious items. It was fantastic.
