omg expensive

So it’s not just my imagination, Turkey really does have the most expensive broadband in the world. As Cem points out, it’s not surprising to anyone who lives in Turkey, but it is surprising in the context of the general cost of living here, which is extremely low. Internet cafés are cheaper than in other countries (our neighbourhood one charges 1.50YTL an hour), but if you want internet in your home it’s gonna set you back. We’re currently paying more for a 512k connection than I was paying for a 3mbit connection in England 3 years ago. And our provider here doesn’t even offer a service as fast as 3mbit— 2mbit is the fastest available, and the monthly fee for that is nearly as much as we pay in apartment rent. So much for my live vlogging idea.

But the truth is, if people want something, they’ll find a way to pay for it whether it’s expensive or not. When I left the United States for good in 1998, gas was just over a dollar a gallon in Texas, and I could fill up my Tercel for less than $20 and still have money left for a burrito (incidentally, I miss burritos like you wouldn’t believe, but I digress). When I got to England, I shocked friends and family back home by reporting that gas there was over $5 a gallon and climbing steadily. Friends told me, “if gas were that expensive here, I wouldn’t buy it, I’d just give up my car.” Ha, sure you would. I’m certain it won’t be long before gas is that expensive in the United States, and so far I don’t see any of my friends throwing their keys away. The same is true of internet. Like cars in Texas (where there is next to no public transportation), for many of us the internet is such a key navigational tool through modern life that it almost becomes a necessity. Were it not for the internet it would certainly be nearly impossible for me to keep up with friends and family in my previous homes, and given the difficulty in finding English-language media in stores here (books, music, television, film), without international online shopping and downloadable products I might have long ago gone crazy from a feeling of alienation and isolation (though my Turkish would almost certainly be a lot better than it is).

I think what it comes down to is that for those of us living the nomadic lifestyle, the internet is the one country we can use as a constant homebase, and despite the fact that access charges vary wildly from place to place, you pay what you have to pay to have access to the parts of the world you want to have access to. I’m not quite willing to pay $160 a month for 2mbit, but I keep being told those prices will come down soon. In fact, they’ve already come down quite a bit— the 2mbit was $190 a month up until May of this year. Yeah, I know it’s shocking, but it’s even more shocking when you consider that many working class people here only make about twice that amount in total monthly salary. It’s amazing Turks can afford internet at all.

There are numerous baseball lovers everywhere. You can easily find thousands of fans of Boston Red Sox and why not this Boston based team is world series champion. For the baseball lovers there are a number of free baseball games available on Internet, which you can play online or download to your computers.