I've been in the Czech Republic for more than 3 years, and most things here I like. But there's one thing, the thought of which always makes me terribly mad.
Imagine, I even got used to the fact that people here openly and loudly blow their noses, and the worst thing is that now I also have paper tissues in my pocket.
Well, now I'm 25 years old. Our generation is strange, we're used to getting happiness hormones from somewhat strange things, so strange that older people didn't understand us from the very beginning.
And here I encountered a problem that makes me as a bright representative of my generation (read, a useless person) wildly mad. Mad, essentially, always when I encounter this here. And it's talks about Putin the internet.
My God, how lousy and expensive it is here.
I first tried the internet in Kaluga, by cards. Total crap, but enough for those times. We were the first children who didn't feel borders.
Then came Kaluga ADSL, the first "normal" internet, and even with a local network. It so happened that it was exactly at this time that my worldview was forming. It's hard to believe how the ideas of the global network were firmly imprinted on those who were in the stage of personality formation (i.e. around 14-18 years old) exactly at that time. People who were teenagers in Russia exactly in that time period are quite easily distinguishable from other young people today.
Then I went to study in Moscow, and there came my first unlimited, and cable too. I paid ridiculous money, just a couple hundred. If you look from the point of view of me now, then, it seems, I dropped out of life for a couple years, couldn't handle such a drug. But then, it seems, it got better. Then cheap mobile unlimited appeared, in general, I got used to the internet.
But then it went downhill, I came to the Czech Republic. I read my article about internet in Poděbrady (pay attention to the use of bold font, what a stylish guy I was) and think, damn that's harsh.
At that time I was wildly not used to such a method of consuming information, long, sluggish, always nerve-wracking. I tried to put up with it for a long time and even came up with excuses for myself like "I came here to study, not to play", only then it became clear that nothing works out when something bothers you in life. Thank God, I'm a genius and got into Prague, unlike you.
Then we moved to Prague, and here came the time of happiness. Honest 100mb/100mb in the dorm for 100 crowns a month. Minimal delays. Non-standard connection type, impossibility of using a router.
I solved this problem, by the way, sat for 1 night flashing the router, getting a high from it better than from your sex and drugs. In short, everything exactly as it should be and without any excuses. By 23 I learned to use the network not to my detriment, but with benefit, although from the outside it seems that I still sit at the computer too much.
By the way, to people who don't get it, it seems that if a person sits at the computer a lot, it means he's an introvert and generally lost. Philosophical Fedyan claims that this is such a form of extraversion, it's just that for lovers of traditional values understanding such moves is probably hard.
At this time thanks to the internet I found myself a job, learned to make money from it. As a child I always dreamed about this, but the world around was so skeptical that, unfortunately, I started too late, for too long the internet was for me only a toy among serious business and other real life, like Darya Dontsova among Jack Londons.
To learn to control myself as part of the global network took just about 10 years, but we're pioneers. What problems of self-determination in the network modern youth faces and how they will solve them, I can only guess.
And what, it would seem, am I getting worked up about the internet for? I recently moved. Not only did I have to connect ADSL (let me remind you, in Kaluga I had it in 2006). 50mb/5mb, which in reality is always lower. So this pleasure also costs 550 crowns (about 1500r, hello Muscovites!) per month. And want another joke? I signed a contract for 2 years. I.e. I'm obliged to pay 550 crowns for 24 months. And if I don't want to pay, I can switch to a prepaid tariff, about 800 crowns per month it will be. And want another joke? I didn't connect the most expensive and worst internet. There's worse and more expensive.
PS several years after writing the article I had a bombshell about this:
That's how it is. It's precisely because of the internet that I relate to the Czech Republic critically almost from day one. I absolutely couldn't put on rose-colored glasses. Much is good here, but the internet is total crap. Take an example from Russia, just don't block websites.