Saturday, April 5, 2008

Keeping it Real Time

We have a son in the Marines, LCpl Benjamin Williams, currently stationed in Africa, and he made sure and got a laptop before his deployment that was wireless capable.

He now is able to quickly apprise us of needs, or say hello to the family. We are half a world away from each other, and yet are able to communicate real-time.

He sends us updates about the place he is living now, and some of the day to day trivialities that are very enthralling to us who have never experienced anything like it.

We are very proud of our Ben. He is the first member of our family to see a lot of the things he has seen, and we are anxious to see him again at the end of his deployment, as he is so full of life and talent. Yes, he even remarks occasionally, how glad he is that he brought his guitar along with him. His accommodations are a lot less primitive than I had imagined they would be when he first told us where he would be going, so I honestly was not sure how well a guitar would fare under those conditions. Apparently he continues to get better and there are others in his squad or platoon who play, that did not bring theirs.

It is always good to hear him ping me for a quick chat. Gotta love that real time data transfer. No previous civilization has known of the things we get to deal with in our lives. We have real time conversations with people half way around the world, we can go to the corner market and buy foods from every corner of the world, even out of season. We have ice in the desert, and conditioned air, we can drive in a day, what a man would have taken a week to cover on foot.

We are more blessed than we sometimes are willing to acknowledge but every day, I am thankful and vociferous about it. This is but one way.

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