There are two sources of Internet problems in Turkey -- those of big city origin and those of small city origin. Because we live remotely down here on the beach in small-city Gümüldür, both types can strike us without warning.

This past Friday afternoon, for instance, we got hit by the big city problem-variety -- when our primary email provider, EgeNet (out of Ege University, the largest university in Izmir, the third largest city in Turkey, with a population of around 5 million), suddenly went into a black hole (for the second time in two months), from which it still hasn't emerged almost 3 days later.

We presume that it will rise from the ashes again (just like the last time) sometime around mid-afternoon today, now that the no-work weekend is over. But we're not sure -- because the telephone call we made and the 2 email queries we sent have each disappeared into that same aforementioned black hole.

Which is why, besides EgeNet, we have 3 backup email providers... Currently, they are TTNET Mail (run by Türk Telecom) in-country and Google's GMail and Yahoo's YahooMail out-country.

That may sound like overkill to you, but once (about 5 years ago) when Turkey's Internet access to the outside world 'went south' (due to a severed underwater communication cable off the coast of Greece), our triple failsafe email backup operators (of that time) took up the slack that EgeNet couldn't handle and helped us through a very dodgy 6 week period. And when another underwater cable was severed less than a year later, we hardly noticed a ripple -- because, by then, we were practiced hands at that particular sort of ' Internet workaround'.

In fact, we even surprise ourselves sometimes --- at our ability nowadays to work around most of the operational problems that can affect our 'Internet life' ... from electrical brown and blackouts, downed telephone lines, telecomm service breakdowns, equipment failures, international internet connection cutoffs, and so on. But, we've been through a lot since we arrived in 1992 -- and if we hadn't learned to cope by now, it'd be even more surprising. Now, wouldn't it?