Will TXT for Food, Better Mobile Messaging

Sometimes I feel I'm standing on the gimp side of the digital divide. Let me explain: Seeing as texting in Costa Rica isn’t the most reliable of wireless services, I've automatically defaulted from taking part in the TXT-for-takeout trend currently taking the fast food industry by storm. I feel I'm missing out; I can read about texting orders online, but that's about it.

Papa John’s and others have the right idea, fer sure, and many digital early adopters are already all about ordering thru text messages. Send a text message, get your pizza in half an hour. It’s simple, super-quick and surprisingly secure, despite what some skeptics would think. Here in Central America, however, the mobile situation is SNAFU as usual, making a TXT-placed order next to impossible.

Check it: If I send a text message using my all-sorts-of-embarrassing, olden Third World cell phone, it might take up to 12 hours for it to reach the desired recipient—if it gets there at all. So when it comes to ordering food, it’s the phone for me, chuck.

1 lrg pzza pls, xtra cheez? Sounds good. But what I really need is rlble txt msging, mos def. Alas, no amount of shorthand can help me inveigh against the state-owned cell phone provider. I guess I’ll resort to in-person complaints at the local agency. Ugh. I feel so savage.

September Rain

Every year, when the rainy season in Costa Rica enters its last and rainiest stage, my mind starts to tire of the water and my soul turns uneasy. Drops of melancholy tinge the air with scents of yesterday, and the deep greens and grays that permeate the drenched city of San José--the same colors that a few months ago I welcomed whole-heartedly and which soothed my soul with gentle whispers--begin to close in on me with unusual heaviness. I venture online for relief, and pretend I am sunning in Sydney or partying in Paris, but once I close my laptop and look out the window, I am once again engulfed by gloomy, solemn sentiments of slowly moving bands of tropical rain.

A cool, misty moisture envelops buildings, trees, and mountaintops, and even once-happy birds seem to find the endless rain oppressive. Cloud forests saturated with moss, rivers overflowing their banks, walls soft to the touch, beaches awash with debris, and angry, sluggish, resentful clouds gathering above, pounding everything below with forceful showers, over, and over, and over again. Comforting but tiring, the rain floods the land with promises of life and winds blow with hints of change, but nothing yet. Television offers little recourse.

I yearn for the sun but make due for now, with work, with exciting digital media forays, and with friends and family. Seasonal Affective Disorder (aptly acronymed SAD) starts to set in with tenacious force, and anchors itself deep within my heart, but I still smile. And while I feel put out, all I can do is stay put, weather the unending rain, and wait for the dry season to arrive. A couple of months from now and I’ll be in the clear, literally. And no matter how many thunderstorms I have to endure, I know that today, the sun shines inside brighter than ever before.