The hotel where I was billeted, the Shah Village Hotel in Petaling Jaya, only had dial-up connection and there was only one computer for all the participants and facilitators to use.  Since one of the facilitators told me that it took her forever to open an email, I decided to look for an Internet café which I knew would have better connections.  After asking around, I was told that there was one at the Amkcor Mall which was walking distance from the hotel.

            We had a pretty packed schedule that Friday and the only free time we had was between 5:30 to 8 pm.  So I thought it was the best time for me to send my column before going off to dinner.

            We got back to the hotel from Putra Jaya at 6:30 and since I knew I was pressed for time I ran to the mall and looked for the Internet café.  I wasted precious minutes looking for the shop and when I finally found it, it was already 7 pm.

            I greeted the young man at the reception table and asked for the rates.  He told me it was 2 dollars for the first 30 minutes and 3 dollars for an hour.  I got a bit confused with the rates so I ask him if by what he meant by dollar was US dollars or Malaysian ringgits and he let out an amused laugh and told me he wouldn’t mind if I paid in US dollars.  That made things clearer for me so I took the computer marked number 1 and was overwhelmed with all the icons on the desktop.

            I hurriedly scanned all the shortcuts and saw that most of them were either games or apps for chatting.  I was looking for the all-familiar icons for MS Word and finding none I went to the Start menu and scrolled at all the programs available.  I still couldn’t find MS Word and began to doubt whether the PC had MS Office in the first place.  I looked at the list more carefully and saw Open Office.  I felt a wave of relief.  I opened the program immediately and began typing my piece.  Several words into my article, I suddenly remembered that my editor had a problem opening Open Office documents the first time I sent him a column using the software.

            It was at this point that I thought of using ThinkFree so there wouldn’t be any problems in terms of access.  I have created two sample documents in my ThinkFree account before but have not really explored all its features so I thought it was the best time to try given the deadline.  I did have some trouble trying to start a document because I had an error message about the absence of some Java components but eventually got around with it. 

            I looked at my watch and it was already 7:15.  I had to go back to the hotel by 7:45 because we had a scheduled dinner at 8:00 at another hotel.  Since I already had a draft of several paragraphs it didn’t take me long to compose an entire column. 

            While typing, I saw below the window that the program was autosaving my text and that came as a relief since I was doing things in a hurry.  When I looked at my watch and saw that it was ten minutes to eight, I quickly saved my work thinking that my editor or my husband would be able to access it, logged out from my account and paid for my PC use.  I ran back to the hotel confident that I will have a story the following week.

            Very early Saturday morning I sent a text message to my husband with instructions on how to access my ThinkFree account.  After a couple of exchanges, he informed me that the document was empty!  I was so dismayed by the information and was doubly devastated when I ran out of prepaid credits!  So I had no choice but to call overseas.

            When I was finally convinced that the article wasn’t there, I began to wonder what I did wrong.  I was so sure I saw the work was saved.  But going back to ThinkFree before writing this piece and looking at the menus, I asked myself should I have shared it or published it besides saving my work?  I wouldn’t really know the answer until I give it another try.

(For feedback, comments, suggestions email me at openingpagemb@yahoo.com)