Tuesday, November 28, 2006

NATO in Riga: wired or wireless

The "big day" is about to start here at the NATO summit in Riga, with the city looking as it might look after a round of bird flu (the expected mutation that gets to humans). Latvian TV was shooting a bizarre spot nearby against the backdrop of a completely empty media center hall, asking the leader of the hundreds of NATO volunteers about how hard they were working (perhaps before the summit, packing thousands of mittens for media and delegates). But truth be told, there are many volunteers scurrying around one floor down, where most of the big press has yet to arrive (three or four Reuters staff of a mob of 30, no one from the AP yet). Ok, maybe these people are out at the airport covering the bigwig arrivals. Why I have never understood, these are mainly visual events of the same people climbing down airline steps in a place that could be anywhere (ok, Riga is a dull gray and unlikely to see any sun for the duration).
I am writing this on a wireline internet connection that seems to be working very fast and efficiently. There are three or four wireless networks running here, I will have to test them later. A colleague from the online portal of the newspaper (with a Windows laptop :) ) needed help in getting the wire connection to run, while my Powerbook G4 connected with no problems. So perhaps there will be a chance to compare service.

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