Did I miss the Internet?

Train entering Ernakulam Station

First, I was on a train for 3 days. Then I was in the hospital city of Vellore for a week, again without the Internet. Did I miss it? Only sporadically, when I wanted to know if train tickets were available. Also, every time I walked out of an ATM, I would have a brief anxiety attack that I wouldn’t be able to check if the person who entered after me wasn’t an ATM scam artist and that my account had been wiped clean:-)

When I checked out my Dad’s computer at home, I discovered that it had been infected with a whole lot of Trojans and rootkits. I tried out Avast and found over 3000 infected files on the computer. It finally turned out that the only way to get rid of them was to reformat the hard drive:-( And unlike the last time I was in Vellore, I was much more circumspect about using internet cafes to check my mail this time around.

The one thing I noticed and twitted about was the profusion of mp3 devices of every size and shape on youngsters on trains, buses and other modes of transportation. The reason for that, I think,  is that FM stations are yet to service the hinterland and people have to carry their music along. In Delhi, most people are plugged into their mobile phones since they all come with FM receivers these days. One of the peculiar problems I faced with my MP 3 player was that the only way I could recharge it was through a USB port, and I finally had to give it to someone to recharge after it went low on juice.It certainly would help if the phone companies provided a USB recharging facility along with the recharge contraptions that they have put up in various public places…

I find that the Internet still remains very much on the periphery of people’s lives here in Kerala…my dad still uses it for the same purposes he was using it 5 years ago, which is to check mail, and occasionally check share prices.  The reason for that is that much of the stuff I do over the Net, from banking to booking tickets, can be done much more easily in person here in Thiruvalla, since it’s such a small town, but with all these services easily available.  That also probably explains why there are only 250,000 odd broad band subscribers in all of Kerala.  Come to think of it, even in Delhi, I’m one of the few to use the Internet for a variety of purposes other than work-related surfing. People are still too wary of the medium which I guess, is a good thing since it’s getting more and more dangerous over time. For instance, there was very little to indicate that those rootkist on my dad’s computer were still in memory other than some very vague messages that popped up when I ran Avast. So much for taking up Internet evangelism as a side business:-)