Utilities

I apologize for the long, rambling post about Brisbane. I wrote it after a long day of beer tasting, so I was not at my best. The reason I wrote it then, and not once I returned to Port Moresby, is because I wanted to take advantage of the superior wi-fi service at the hotel. Yes that's right, the wi-fi service of a hotel, is far superior to what we have in our apartment. It takes forever to upload photos so I wanted to post them before I left. Although, why it was necessary to post a picture of the woman who helped us with the River Cat, I'm not sure, but it seemed really important to me on Saturday night.

Anyway, I will try to explain the challenges of everyday life in PNG. Our internet service is provided by this little box.

It basically works the same way as an iPhone turned into a Hotspot. It receives a cell signal and then generates its own wi-fi signal that we use to connect all of our devices too. It claims to work on a 4G signal, but I find that hard to believe. It certainly isn't the same as a 4G signal back home. Not only is the speed very slow, but we are limited in how much data we can use. Our package allows us to download 7 GB per month. That may not sound like a lot, but if you consider a 1 hour television show is about 2 GB, you can see that it won't last very long. This slow and restrictive service costs about $200 per month.

You have to manage your devices differently on a system like this as well. When I first set it up, we were burning through data like crazy and I couldn't figure out why, but then I realized we had our phones, tablets and computers all set to update automatically. It had been awhile since our stuff was connected to a wi-fi signal so there were new operating systems, app updates, podcasts and god knows what downloading at the same time. It took some getting used to, but we've figured it out. When we were in the hotel in Brisbane, I updated everything and downloaded some new shows to watch.

Our electricity service is interesting as well. We have to pay for our power before we use it. There is an Easipay kiosk in the shopping centre nearby. We give them our customer number and then buy credits with PNG Power. We are then given a 16 digit number that we must input into this box in our apartment.

The credits are then shown on the display and our power is turned on. During our first month we spent over 1000 Kina on electricity, which is over $500 Canadian. If a power bill for $500 seems high but not outrageous, remember this is for an apartment, not a house and we are not heating this apartment. In fact we don't even use our electricity to heat our hot water, that's done with solar panels on the roof. We only use electricity for appliances and lights. When we lose our power (2 or 3 times a day) the back-up generator kicks in. When we are on the generator, we aren't using our credits, so our power bill could be a lot higher.

Life is different for sure, but once you get the hang of it, it's not bad.

db