The Wonders of Modern Global Communication

As much as I like engaging in internet bashing and various complaining about privacy issues like we enjoy so much doing in the northern western regions of the planet. I must say that I never saw the value of it more clearly than now that I am overseas in a completely different country in a completely different part of the world.
Cheap, reliable, familiar and readily available electronic communication means has completely altered the way travelling abroad feels like and in this regard alone is incredibly powerful!

It all started deciding to buy this cheap but lightweight and very convenient netbook. This occured 2 weeks before leaving for South Africa. I realized that most of my life and everything that I do as a Canadian resident and French citizen living abroad was done through the web.
I mean important stuff like registering to school, applying for loans, paying my phone bills, managing my money from accounts spread across our vast multi-provincial territory, paying taxes, exerting my right to vote in France, and I'm not even talking about emails. I simply realized that this was our reality and I wouldn't have it any other way. It's so convienient. So I needed a reliable personnal and secure access to the web that was purchased again at a very reasonable price for what it makes possible.

Going back to travelling in the world, flying from Toronto (CANADA) to Johannesburg (SOUTH AFRICA) is a long ordeal. The longest flight that I always known was going across the altantic ocean from the Americas to Europe. On this journey this flight was the shortest leg of the trip! Arriving in Paris airport early in the morning was unbeleivably boring. So I shell out this little computer and noticed that "wi-fi" was available (this is internet over the air). It wasn't free mind you but you could purchased airtime using your credit card directly from your own computer.
That's what I did and I am so glad. I could connect with a friend not asleep in Canada who who was preparing her own trip anxious to go back to Europe have a video conference and fool around. This was one of the nicest and most emotion filled chat I had in my life. On its own right this connection would have been worthwhile but what was almost priceless is being able to do things exactly the same way I am accustomed to. I felt at genuinely at home and didn't feel the distance separating me from my normal life and the 4 hours litteraly flew by without getting tired.

At this point I thought "well, ok France is my country and what if I don't feel jet-lagged I know I can handle this flight". Yes this must be it I have done taken these transtlantic flights before and I'm in my country: this is probably why I feel at home!
then I paid a credit card bill online and proceed to board the 11-hour flight to South Africa being just happy to be awake and ready for it.

I won't talk about the flight itself since it was a cultural immersion on itself and this is worth a dedicated entry.

Let's fastforward to Johannesburg. Johannesburg felt kind of familiar in the sense that it is made of cultural bits and pieces of places I have already lived in in the past so I immediately knew that I will be having a peacefull time adaptation wise.
However on my first day of being at work I came accross my internet again and found that here people are very fond of facebook. They use it the same way me and my friends do, on the same computers with the same softwares. There is no learning curve.
At this moment I felt the same feeling of being at home again, with different people yeah but people that could have as well been just from the next town.

and now i thought this is not Paris, this is South Africa i have never been here before. As a matter of fact Africa is very new to me. there is no way I am getting this homely feeling because of experience and right of citizemship. This is as foreign as it can be ... at least geographically and on paper but not in real life.

I have registered for my course in Toronto and begin applying for my yearly loan today exactly the same way that would have at my place in Canada and this feeling of being at home in "one-world" has not left me since.