As I had been duly warned back in Europe, I quickly come to terms with the fact that hyper-connectivity is a word I will have to forget for the next year, super fast internet being another luxury we cannot afford here in Antartica. We are linked via a huge satellite dish, which is protected from the bitter cold in a shelter, but the bandwidth is mostly used to send scientific data back home. Work email is the only connection we are allowed on our private pc.
There are queues in front of the computer room every evening to get to the only 2 public computers with access to skype and internet, and which everyone must share equally… We do have WhatsApp on our phones, but the bandwidth is not generous enough to allow sending pictures, unless you take a screenshot of your photo, crop it, and are then prepared to spend a few hours pressing “send” every so often… You must adapt for absolutely everything, even what you considered trivial details!
Staying in touch with family and friends definitely takes perseverance and patience… For once being insomniac is useful, as the network is somewhat less busy in the middle of the night. We must also quickly wean ourselves from our smartphones and forget about relying on gadgets such as news feeds, dictionaries, star maps, word games, foreign language tutorials, social media, the list goes on… But then again I won’t need my bus schedule or a google map any time soon! I unfortunately discover that my music library is also dependent on a regular wifi connection, courtesy of a company I will not name…. So much for planning ahead and trying to upload as much music as I could before leaving! Luckily, the multimedia server of the station is very well stocked-up and saves me. Nothing like music to lift up the spirits and cheer everyone up!
75 Degrees South 