The Ultimate Escape

Accompanied by the lovely Tamara I sauntered (is there any other pace in Byron?) into town today to have a look for and a chat to some other remote workers. We ventured into Why Not which is a great little cafe and seemed like a good place to conduct some interviews with random people placed in front of their laptops. The couple of laptop users that were furiously tapping away on their keyboards were Patricia and Carmen. Patricia was from Spain and communicating with her friends and family back home in between translating English books into Spanish. Carmen was downloading university transcripts as well as responding to emails. Both were enjoying a great cup of coffee and enjoying the ambiance. Speaking with Jules the owner we found out that wi-fi was installed about 2 years ago as another value-add for their patrons. Having something for free in a tourist town like Byron will always attract free-loaders who want to take advantage of the situation but Jules estimates that would only be 5-10% of the wi-fi users. Most remote workers that come into his premises realise that it is a commercial business and engage in a mutually beneficial, albeit brief partnership. It seems that human nature dictates that some of us will take advantage of others but thankfully that is just a small percentage. Free wi-fi, access to powerpoints (unlike the establishment in my previous post) great ambience, friendly staff all for the cost of a cup of coffee seems like a good deal to me.