Technology

Pooping in a hole, living without electricity or hot water, and hiking twenty minutes waiting ten minutes and 20 more minutes on public transportation to get to a food store, hardly compared to my withdraw from technology. I've thrived with technology, teaching myself electrical engineering and computer science, using Wikipedia to teach myself whatever topic, using Google Calendar to keep my life organized, etc. Arriving to Panama was taking a large step back in my life, and an introduction to living much more basic. This post is dedicated to all the gadgets that have made living a bit less basic.

 

Kindle 3G - While the Kindle part is pretty awesome, the 3G part is much more awesome. Amazon has, through some sort of magic, managed to offer free internet access throughout the world wherever the Kindle 3G can connect. I've managed to connect to the internet, a very basic internet consisting of only downloadable books, Facebook, and Gmail while in my site and also while traveling in Peru, for FREE.

Battery Pack - Thanks to my aunt, this is probably one of the best purchases I made before arriving to Panama. While in a place with electricity, I can charge the battery pack. Once I return to site, I can charge anything that has a USB connection. This means I can charge my smart phone, headlamp, Kindle, and iPod, all from this battery pack. It's got enough charge to recharge my smart phone about three times which can get me through a week before heading out of site to charge again.

Bluetooth Keyboard - With the hindsight that I have now, I would have gone back and purchased only a smart phone and keyboard in place of a laptop. The laptop is clunky and hard to charge. With a keyboard and smart phone I can do almost everything I'd want to do with a laptop. If you factor in the battery pack, which cannot charge a laptop, the smart phone and keyboard duo are perfect for Peace Corps living.

Waka Waka Solar Panel and Light - This is pretty awesome, it's got a light on one side and a solar panel on the other. Charge it through the solar panel during the day and use the light at night. It can also charge basic feature phones as well.

Smart phone - Oh smart phones. I try and think about the lives of volunteers before cell phones. I pay $1 for 30 minutes to call the United States, and can get international texting and email in my house. That's about it, no streaming Youtube or anything like that but the future is arriving to the countryside pretty rapidly. (My old Peace Corps neighbor could browse the internet from his house.)

Smart phone apps - I thought it would be interesting to list the apps that help me in the day to day. Feel free to skip this section if you don't have a smart phone or care about such things.

• Media Player - I can watch and listen to whatever and have a lot of storage to do so.
• My phone has word processing and spreadsheet applications which allow me to write posts like this. (I'm using my phone + bluetooth keyboard right now!)
• Gmail with offline sync - this allows me to check emails I've already received whenever, even if I have no connection.
• Wikipedia - Surprisingly, I can get Wikipedia in site. It's pretty slow and I generally cannot view pictures, but if I want to learn something, boom, done.
• Dictionaries - English, Spanish, English/Spanish, all useful.
• Google Translate with offline language packs - Google Translate is now available completely without internet.
• Calls/Texts Blacklist - Service providers in Panama love to spam at least a text or two a day. I can block those messages.
• Calculator/Converter - As an engineer I've got a special calculator and unit converter to help with my work.

And that's about it. Many others live a bit more basic or a bit more advanced like my friend who has a solar panel and cell signal booster so he can get electricity and great internet access an hour hike from the nearest road.