Day of computer problems.....

        Oh, the stress of it all. I was by turns angry, disappointed, fearful and felt lonely and isolated,

Conservative shoppers....

rejected and forgotten by the world. Sounds pretty serious. Google had let me down. Every time I tried to enter the internet, the sites including G-Mail mail froze. I applied the various virus scanners and scrubbers---nothing worked and I was not able to determine if the problem was with Google, was just me, only in Malaysia or the whole world.  Then I had the bright idea of sending a Skype text message to my lovely and media talented daughter, not realizing that a Skype alarm would send her tumbling out of bed at 4 am to help and advise her tech challenged dad. Quick as a flash she diagnosed the problem and promptly recommended that I switch away from Chrome and enter G Mail through Internet Explorer.

Melange of architectural styles.....

Wow-- it worked and down into my G Mail dropped several totally unimportant messages---and here was me expecting that the whole world was going into seizures and worrying that this scribe had disappeared, been hijacked or abducted from his KL B&B digs.
         I thank the internet gods that luckily, I had had the foresight to back-up onto a USB my 2500 digital travel photographs, so that they are stored in three separate locations. 
         In the of relief that is sweeping through my aged veins, I believe that I experienced the terror and panic that is today associated with being forced 'off-line' for a few hours. Well within my lifetime, we used to buy a postcard of exotic locations, search the city for a post office and mail off said post card that would then take 3 weeks via airmail to let the folks back home know that all was well.  Today, a delay of 3 minutes is stressful and 24 hours 'off line', beyond words. It brought home to me, a realization of just how far we have come with all this instant technology that we accept as a matter of course into our lives and how completely hostage we are to mechanical technical glitches and horrors, hackers.