What do I miss most from Vancouver? One thing is the super high-speed, reliable web access.
Here in Morocco, the Internet access has been dependable, but desperately slow. I’m surfing like it’s 1997 over here.
Three times over the past week, I’ve been unable to access sections of the web. This morning, for example, I could get to Shaw.ca and UVic.ca, but not to my own site or Jen’s. When I did a search on Flickr, only about half the photos loaded. I assume this is because their data centers are spread across the country (or world).
I’ve seen this before, but it was extremely rare in Canada. I assume it has to do with some temporary router (or whatever) failure in the network.
DarrenBarefoot.com 
I think that we often take for granted the quality of our internet. Granted, we’re not Japan, and we dont have 100mb/s connections (unless we pay for them!), but we do have really decent broadband service at a half-decent rate in Canada!
Yah, I went out to my dad’s in chilliwack a while ago, and his was painfully slow. I’m pretty lucky because they put fiber into my building last year. I can literally download 1 MB/s in the evenings from a lot of sites.
Ah yes, life is good.
I don’t want to jump to conclusions, but could it be censorship? Here’s one article about things that get whacked in Morocco:
http://www.moroccosavvy.com/taamarbuuta/2007/05/26/when-will-we-fight-on-internet-censorship/
“Toto, I’ve got a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore”
I’ve experienced a similar problem with a friend who just moved to Saudia Arabia – uploading and downloading files is problematic. The file transfer speeds are slow and the files seem to corrupt, though they transfer through IM well enough. There’s only one ISP in the country, so she’s kind of stuck. The country is very modern in some ways, but the infrastructure just isn’t there. I sympathize.
Saudia Arabia, Kuwait, etc., they’re all censoring the internet to some degree. Here’s one blogger’s experience in Kuwait:
http://www.248am.com/?s=blocked&x=0&y=0