Life After the Internet

This is the first day of my last days…

Nine Inch Nails: Wish

Life is an opportunity to create, to taste food, to experience love, to have an orgasm, to learn how to play guitar, to frolic in the rain, to laugh, to be adventurous, to make friends. Life is also… disposable. It is a little span of time that allows us to choose and to achieve.

Here’s the kicker – every second after our birth brings us closer to death. To live is to die yet only the almighty knows which of the two is better. One way or another – it pays to make every second count.

Does Technology Make Our Lives Easier or More Difficult?

The fact that our countdown starts the second we are born is something we as humans have realized a long time ago and being the top of the food chain, we brought technology into our lives to make them less complicated. I can’t help but notice, however that even though technology does make our daily survival chores easier, it also disconnects us from social and cultural ties that existed in our societies for millennia.

It would almost seem as though every new technological invention, like a double sided sword, would on one hand make the task it is intended for easier, but on another make our lives as a whole more complicated by over-stimulating our bodies and minds with unnatural impulses.

Internet – The Ultimate Antisocial Tool

Internet is considered to be one of the most groundbreaking inventions of men. It has revolutionized almost every aspect of our lives on both societal and individual levels. Easily the most significant impact the internet has made on our lives is the removal of physical presence. Internet connection is all one needs to do business globally, manage international workers, make and receive payments, balance checkbooks, plan a vacation and more – all without leaving the bedroom.

Internet also made the availability of information and speed at which it becomes available unsurpassed, but it’s the fact that you can get this news while chatting with friends, booking your flight ticket or masturbating that truly impacts our lives. 15 years ago, different activities required the use of different tools and presence in different places but today, all one needs is a computer with internet access.

To bet on a sporting event 15 years ago, one would have to go to the booking office. Today one can do it by sitting on a computer with internet access. To talk to a few friends at the same time, one would have to arrange a meeting so they all are in the same room. Today they can do it by sitting on their computers with internet access even if they are worlds apart. Heck, 15 years ago people actually knew all of their friends in real life. Today, thanks to the internet, people have more friends they have never met in person (virtual friends, aka surrogates), than they have the real life ones.

Internet – in a single sentence – has become the ultimate antisocial tool capable of leaving huge holes where comradeships and community once reigned.

Life After the Internet

From a documentary Zeitgeist: Moving Forward I learned that a need for human touch and companionship are necessary for survival and normal development of all human beings. What are we as human beings going to develop into if we continue allowing the internet to keep us from getting to know and interact with one another without any physical contact?

Photo: Screenshot Showing How Internet Giant Facebook Defines Itself
Photo: Screenshot Showing How Internet Giant Facebook Defines Itself

Internet is an excellent tool, but as with everything, when used by weak-minded individuals, it starts to control them, even though they think it’s the other way around. You can tell how many weak-minded individuals are out there by taking a look at how many profiles exist on Facebook. The description of Facebook states the following:

Facebook is a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them…

..and that’s the way most people perceive Facebook as. Little do they realize that while it connects them with some, it disconnects them with many more. Prior to the internet, people connected with friends by meeting and socializing with them. Instead of entertaining themselves by staring at computer screens, people went somewhere to be with people. Facebook eliminates the need for physical contact and face to face interactions and replaces them with imaginary world in which sounds require speakers.

Internet addicts have internet-numbed brains which prevent them from acknowledging an extent to which internet affects their lives and even if the acknowledgement comes, an attempt to withdraw and set themselves free never thoroughly follows through. To them internet is not a tool which is used when necessary. To them it’s an addiction they dedicate most of their time to, even if it means sacrificing time which would be spent with family or friends. Afterall, how could lunch with friends be any more important than a comment written to impress hoards of people they haven’t even met?

Alienated Communication

Life after the internet disconnected people from people. Even if there is an off the internet meet-up, the weak-minded, internet-numbed individuals will attend it by spending more time on their little machines (whether texting with cell phones or checking their status and posting comments using internet enabled gadgets) interacting with surrogates than talking with physically present friends.

I recently went to a library and the place was packed. However, I was the only one browsing for books. Everybody else came there to use their free internet. Some youngsters sat mere feet away from each other, yet instead of looking into each other’s eyes to talk, they stared at the screens and chatted using an internet based instant messenger service.

What happened to us? Why did we allow such amazing invention as internet to completely take over our lives and sacrifice everything that makes us who we are to it? When TVs became widely affordable and every household had one, we thought something important was being lost because instead of socializing with other human beings, people spent hours staring absently at a TV screen. We truly had no idea back then what was yet to come…

Internet and Traveling Mark

Internet addiction, just as any other addiction is a sign of mental weakness. If you allow the internet to take you over and do not do anything about it while you can, then you are a weak-minded individual and deserve every bit of what is coming to you. Luckily for me, my journey to self discovery opened up my eyes to more than just what my life after the internet turned into.

My income still depends on use of the internet, but I’m not saying there is anything wrong with using the internet as a tool to achieve great things. I realized a while ago what massive pair of shackles internet represents and have appropriately addressed it. Since that time, I’ve been realizing nothing but its potential. For me, life after the internet has not ended in favour of virtual reality. How about you? It takes a strong individual to see beyond the tip of one’s nose. Have you had your eyes locked to the screen for so long you can no longer focus on the vast world that spreads before your nose’ tip? Remember, today is the first day of the rest of your life? At least make it the rest of your life, not the rest of virtual reality in which you existed.

Present for Ha’s Daughter

After my first meeting with Ha’s daughter, I knew it wasn’t going to be our last. This sort of caught me off guard as all my recent encounters with kids were negative – either trained clowns able to fake-cry on command, going out of their way to get money off of you and telling you to F%$k off if you don’t give it to them, or screaming the entire flight turning an already exhausting experience into a nightmare from hell – so if you even remotely brought up anything to do with kids, I would have told you to keep them as far away from me as possible so nobody gets hurt. But bubbly personality Ha’s daughter was radiating got the best of me.

After I embarked on my third day of Angkor exploring, I took on the Grand Circuit in a counter-clockwise direction with a mandatory stop at my new-found friends’ from the Sras Srang village. The temple of Banteay Kdei was about 12 km away from where I stayed in Siem Reap, and just a corner turn away from the Grand Circuit which made it a perfect, strategic stop to recharge on energy with coconut water and cool off the sweat the ride so far has resulted in. But I also had an extra plan for the stop at Banteai Kdei.

When I first went with Ha to see her daughter, I made a quick stop at a convenience store to buy candy. I thought it would make a kid happy and pre-occupied enough to leave me the hell alone. It did make her happy – beyond happy – but it didn’t keep her off of me, though by that time I didn’t mind. Obviously, buying the kid a simple thing which her mother could not afford to buy meant a world to the little girl. Anticipating my next meeting with her, I thought I was gonna buy something more sustainable and less damaging to her already spoilt teeth. I had to take two things into an account:

  • No matter where in Siem Reap I go, I’d get ripped off
  • Ha was always by my side, except from times when I was at Angkor

I wanted to make it a surprise so buying anything in Siem Reap would defeat this idea. And since any business in Siem Reap would try to rip me off as much as any tout at Angkor Archaeological Park would, there was no benefit to buying in town over buying at Angkor. On top of it all – my relationship with the Sras Srang villagers was nicely developing so I thought I’ll get the best of both world and buy something for Ha’s daughter from them.

As much as I enjoyed the company of the villagers, they were still Cambodians and I was still a foreigner. For them it’s always an “Us Against Them” game so as I kept spending more and more time with them, but buying nothing except a whole pile of coconuts every day, they continued bugging me and requesting that I fall for their sales pitch and spend more money. Under normal circumstances, I would not give in to the pressure of pestering touts (except that one time when the little girl tout who broke into tears after a would-be customer bought from somebody else), but since I wanted to buy Ha’s daughter something anyway, so why not from my new friends? Whom better to support financially than people with whom I was gonna spend several month with (though at the time I didn’t quite know it yet)? So I did just that. It didn’t ease the pressure one bit, but gave me an extra argument to counter theirs with when they tried to force me into buying some more.

Granted, everything they sell at Angkor is a piece of junk. There are basically two types of items you can buy: bootlegs of all sorts and miserable quality t-shirts. I didn’t have many options so I went for a low quality t-shirt. I’m not very good at buying presents so I had to make it easy on myself. The biggest challenge I was faced with was trying to guess the right size for Ha’s daughter. They had children sized tops with elephants on them in both small and medium. I asked my friends to get some four year old girl touts to come over so I can test the size on them. Since Ha’s daughter was the same age and racial differences are minimal between the Vietnamese and the Cambodians, I thought this was gonna help me choose the right size. I ended up going with medium sized top as small seemed as though it was meant for infants. I also thought buying the top that’s a bit too big would be better in a long run than getting one that’s a bit too small. The four year olds grow big quickly, so if the garment is a tad large right now, it’ll fit just fine later. Whereas if it’s already tight, it’s gonna be completely unusable very soon.

My suspicion was correct – the medium sized top was still a bit too big for her, but that mattered not. Both Ha and her daughter were beaming with delight when I pulled the top out of my camera bag and handed it to the little girl. I haven’t seen this much happiness in a very long time. The girl was so excited she instantly wanted to pose for pictures with her new top on. She loved having her pictures taken and as a photographer, I loved taking them. Four year old, but so photogenic and just shining with glamour. Little did they know at the time that this was naught but the beginning. The main surprise of the day was yet to come.

Gallery of pictures I took of Ha’s daughter wearing the top I bought her from the villagers at Banteay Kdei temple is below:

Good Bye San Pedro de Macoris

This was it. I was leaving the Dominican Republic the following day and only had a few more hours for San Pedro de Macoris. I had to drive overnight to Punta Cana to get there in time for return of my rental car and check in for the flight. The die was cast – I did what I could to recover my laptop but it didn’t work out. Yet. I however knew that I was leaving with one strong contact in San Pedro de Macoris on whom I could rely. Domingo became my good friend and I feel truly grateful for all the help he provided me with. My time in the Dominican Republic was up and I couldn’t wait to get the hell out of there. Getting my laptop stolen by a person I was helping was a terrible experience that will put the country on my personal black list.

Before saying my final Good Bye to San Pedro de Macoris, I wanted to have one more beer with Domingo and hoped lovely Keira would be there to join us. We drove down to San Pedro’s Malecon and yes, Keira was there. She looked stunning and was happy to see us as much as we were to see her. She’s an amazing companion who made my time spent at the beer there very enjoyable. It gave her sads when I mentioned that I was leaving San Pedro de Macoris to catch the plane in Punta Cana the following day. It meant that this was the last time we are seeing each other to which she reacted in such genuine and sweet way it made me feel warm after all the disappointment in the Dominican Republic so far.

I made two wonderful friends in San Pedro – Domingo and Keira even though Domingo later corrected me to make it three, because his wife considered it a pleasure to have met me and enjoyed the time with me. To her, all Domingo’s friends are also friends of hers and are welcome anytime to their house. I tried to look at the bright side of life and told myself that all of the laptops of the world are temporary, but true friendships are forever. Keira insisted that I come to the Dominican Republic again. She promised that this time around it will be her who catches a ride with me and she’s no thief. She enjoyed my company as much as I enjoyed hers and was shocked I was leaving because it meant she was not gonna get a chance to spend more time with me. She thought I was gonna be here for at least a few more days but the reason I was not too social during my stay was that I felt down all the time after my laptop got stolen.

Keira was a sweetheart from start to end. Domingo was an amazing support from start to end. So much headache caused by laptop theft but if it wasn’t for this stolen laptop, I would have never met these two wonderful people. I was torn between my feeling of hatred towards the country that put me through the biggest stress of my life and love for it because of wonderful people who showed so much support and offered so much unconditional help. There are good people in every walk of life and one must strive to not ignore them. This is something I’ve always been aware of but my mind was clouded by ruthless crime committed against me.

My last moments in San Pedro de Macoris were truly enjoyable. Keira has a little sister who despite her young age (she’s 8 year old) could speak great English. I had one last pack of chewing gums on me because I gave all the rest to Domingo’s children when we went to visit them at the place of his former wife so I gave it to Keira’s little sister who rewarded me with the sweetest “Thank You” I have ever heard. San Pedro de Macoris is not a tourist trap. The town is on the coast, but it doesn’t have the beach or anything otherwise attractive to tourists so locals don’t see many foreigners there. As such these people are more genuine and unlike Dominicans from popular tourist areas, they are not used to getting free gifts in exchange for looking cute. When I gave little Shakira (Keira’s sister’s name) chewing gums, it was the most genuine child’s appreciation I have ever seen. So definitely worth it.

Alas, I had to bid my friends good bye. Domingo was a little concerned about me driving over night all the way to Punta Cana but I explained that I actually preferred to drive at night because traffic is less crazy and I needed to get there early anyway so I have time buffer in case something goes wrong. Leaving my great new friends was not easy, but I really needed to go back home to Canada as I had a lot of stuff to take care of now that my laptop was gone. I said my final good byes to San Pedro de Macoris, sat in a car and drove off into the night.