How I Once Spent Three and a Half Hours Trying to Send an Email

This is the true story of how I spent an entire morning attempting to send a single email. I was in the big town, where they have stale baguettes, yogurt, several bars, and, most importantly, internet. Needless to say, it’s a pretty exciting place to visit. I had some work to do and was planning on using some of that precious internet. I left the house around 8:00 am to go to the internet café. The ma was just setting the place up. I had to wait for the computer to turn on and then the ma activated the internet key. After several minutes, the home page loaded and I signed in to my account. I noticed one particular email that was important to respond to, and started with that. I began writing my response (it was a bit lengthy), when about half way through, the power went out. The computer shut off and I lost everything I had written. It was a bit disheartening and frustrating, but what could I do? I’m sorry to say, I did not learn from my mistake. After waiting for the ancient computer to start up again and reactivating the internet, I began working on my response for a second time. I figured since I already had the main ideas worked out form the previous attempt, if I just wrote it quickly, things would be okay. Unfortunately, I did not write quickly enough. Just as I was wrapping up the email, the power shut off for a second time. I lost every thing again. Now, I was just plain frustrated. By now, over an hour had passed. (Which the ma kindly reminded me as she demanded I pay for internet use). I might have been fooled once, but by this time I was smart enough to learn form my mistake. I decided to go and write the email from my own computer at home and then put it onto a flash drive and email it. I went home and wrote out the email without any hitch. Great, I thought, now all I have to do is upload it onto a computer and send it, it’ll be over and done with in just a few minutes. Wrong. I really should have known better, I should not still be so naïve. I went back to the internet café, flash drive in hand. Power was back on, but now the internet network was down. I waited around for about ten minutes to see if it would come back on, but I eventually had to give up. I then went to a different internet café to see if they had a working connection. The place was open, but no one was in. I called the number written on the shop to let them know I was here. The auntie said she had stepped out, but that she would come right away. I sat down to wait. Some little kids came up to me and played with my hair and sang songs to me. That was nice. They did that for over half an hour, because that’s about how long it took for the auntie to show up. She came and switched on the computer and set me up. I plugged in my flash drive and opened up the internet. I went to log in when the computer froze. I had to relocate the auntie, who had disappeared again, and after tampering with the machine for a bit, she decided it would have to be restarted. I waited for the computer to restart. When that was finally accomplished, we activated the internet again. I tried to open the home page, but nothing happened. Her credit for the internet had finished. She would have to add credit to her account. She removed the key and went off to purchase more credit. This also took about half an hour. She finally came back and then went through about ten minutes of activation procedure. She plugged in the key again and the internet worked. I logged into my account, copy and pasted my email, and pressed send. At last, I had finished my mission. My mission of sending one email. It was now past 11:30 am. And that’s how I spent my entire morning trying to send an email.

On a similar note, if you ever feel like I’m not communicating with you enough or I don’t write often, please, it’s nothing personal. It’s to preserve my own mental health.