Thursday 14th April
My broadband antenna on one of the poles supporting the solar water heater
Although there is something sublime about sitting in a plank cabin and sending actors’ auditions to Hollywood or the BBC via a Nokia mobile phone stuck to the wall, the flaky, slow connection had become too frustrating to bear any longer – and also comparatively expensive. Fortunately, an innovative company provides broadband access to remote areas in the Overberg by using WiFi technology. Bandwidth costs are on a par with the national average, but setup costs can be high. As it happens, an oil-rig worker who has built a wart of a house on the next hill has recently subscribed, and the guys at TWK Communications had the good sense to install an area repeater at the same time. I could pick the signal up on my cell-phone, although not on my now ageing laptop.
I explained that I didn’t need a lot of bandwidth, but speed was important, and that I would only be here intermittently. TWK Communications specialises in tailored solutions so they chopped their smallest package in half, and traded me bandwidth for the speed usually available on their more expensive packages. I can also carry over unused bandwidth from periods when I am not at Boggy Pond into periods when I am here.
The team arrived after lunch and set about installing a neat little plastic box on the longest of the solar water heater poles – which I had earmarked for just this purpose. Lining the antenna up was simply a matter of squinting over the top of it at the mast on the next hill, and pretty soon my plank cabin was connected to the world via a 512/2048 radio connection with 1Gb of bandwidth per month. While I rather fancied the idea of an impressive braai-grid-and-ski-stick antenna above my simple wooden hut, the plastic box is less likely to end up in a scrap-metal dealer’s yard!
Just in time too, because a British Director had been doing call-backs with Christa in Johannesburg, and the Execs in the UK needed to see the footage the next day. Since Ben was on the set of the Soapie, after supper I jumped straight into the trenches and encoded and uploaded 40 minutes of call-back auditions in Joburg via remote control of my edit machine there. For one reason and another, not related to my new connection, the job took all night, and I only flopped into bed at 04h30 on Friday morning…
Aah, the relaxed county life! Yeah, right!