Expat technology

In terms of technology, expat living has changed a heck of a lot since I was last living in Europe (London) in 1998. I barely used e-mail, and when I did I had to go to an Internet cafe with a bunch of sweaty Australian backpackers. I had a pager because I couldn't qualify for a cell phone (the shame!), so I used public phones and calling cards to call my parents. And that's about the extent of the technology I used to communicate with friends and family back home. No wait, I wrote some postcards, too.

Al Gore's Internet has changed everything. Having Internet abroad means e-mail, of course, but now it also means Skyping with webcams, blogging, Internet radio, social networking sites like Facebook, other online communities like Mums in Sweden (just to take a random example) and other weird things like Twitter, which I'm just not willing to figure out (I like you but I really do not want to know what you're doing every 5 seconds, alright!). All of these together can sometimes make you forget that you're living 6,000 miles away. As I write this I'm wondering if this is a good thing or not. Let me rephrase and say that all this technology means you never feel lonely. Better.

This morning, for example, I woke up, read some posts from the Glen Park Parents list (a Yahoo Group for parents in our old neighborhood -- it's really time for me to unsubscribe), and turned on my wireless Internet radio just in time to hear the SF traffic report followed by the California Report. Granted, the streaming audio is from 10pm CA time when I'm listening at 7am in Sweden, but hey. I love my radio. Here's a picture:


Isn't she pretty?. Thanks to James and Julia in Belgium for the idea because this thing is awesome. It gets something like 12,000 channels and you can listen to streaming audio or archived programs 24/7. Mostly we listen to KQED but sometimes I let Adrian listen to British Radio 4 because he bought the radio for me after all.

And by the way, I did qualify for a cute Nokia cell phone this time around, but only through Adrian (thanks Honey). Now I'm a texting fanatic. Also, I still like postcards, except sending one to the U.S. costs $2 so I don't like them quite as much as I used to.