Twitter is a medium that seems to get little use, but this could also be simply my lack of experience. I am currently following three users from Alto Hospicio, but they do not seem to use it very often. Two of the young men simply use it to further publicize their foursquare check-ins and instagram photos. The third, who is a radio producer mostly re-tweets news items. Though I get most of my Iquique and Alto Hospicio related news from twitter, I do not get the sense that many people in Alto Hospicio use twitter as a source of news.
This was confirmed when a few weeks ago I had met a guidance counselor from a colegio in Alto Hospicio for dinner in Iquique. She lives in Iquique and suggested we get sushi. When I agreed she told me that there is no good sushi in Alto Hospicio, so it would be better if we go to place near her house. She picked me up where the bus lets off passengers at the bottom of the hill, and drove near the beach to a nice restaurant. After the meal, she drove me back to the bus stop and dropped me off around 8pm. There seemed to be a strangely large number of people waiting, but I’m not usually in Iquique on Friday evenings, so I thought maybe it was not so abnormal. However, after no busses came for twenty minutes (they usually come about every 5 min), I started to wonder what was going on. When after an 45 minutes nothing had arrived I asked people around me. No one seemed to know. A few people sent text messages or made phone calls to people who were waiting for them with cell phones (both regular and smartphones). A police man walked past and a 50 year old woman asked him if there was an accident that was causing a delay. He did not know but told the woman she should call the non-emergency police information number to ask. She did that and informed a small group around her that there had been a major accident on the highway that leads up the hill from Iquique to Alto Hospicio, and traffic was not moving, and was expected to take several more hours to clear. Though I told my friend from the colegio my situation when she sent me a Whatsapp message to ask if I had made it home safely, I waited out the busses. I finally made it home a little before midnight, and when I turned on my computer I checked twitter, and my feed was loaded with reports of the crash. It hadn’t occurred to me, nor seemingly anyone of the nearly 100 people at the bus stop to check twitter for information. Yet it was there all along.
p.s. follow me on twitter!
This was confirmed when a few weeks ago I had met a guidance counselor from a colegio in Alto Hospicio for dinner in Iquique. She lives in Iquique and suggested we get sushi. When I agreed she told me that there is no good sushi in Alto Hospicio, so it would be better if we go to place near her house. She picked me up where the bus lets off passengers at the bottom of the hill, and drove near the beach to a nice restaurant. After the meal, she drove me back to the bus stop and dropped me off around 8pm. There seemed to be a strangely large number of people waiting, but I’m not usually in Iquique on Friday evenings, so I thought maybe it was not so abnormal. However, after no busses came for twenty minutes (they usually come about every 5 min), I started to wonder what was going on. When after an 45 minutes nothing had arrived I asked people around me. No one seemed to know. A few people sent text messages or made phone calls to people who were waiting for them with cell phones (both regular and smartphones). A police man walked past and a 50 year old woman asked him if there was an accident that was causing a delay. He did not know but told the woman she should call the non-emergency police information number to ask. She did that and informed a small group around her that there had been a major accident on the highway that leads up the hill from Iquique to Alto Hospicio, and traffic was not moving, and was expected to take several more hours to clear. Though I told my friend from the colegio my situation when she sent me a Whatsapp message to ask if I had made it home safely, I waited out the busses. I finally made it home a little before midnight, and when I turned on my computer I checked twitter, and my feed was loaded with reports of the crash. It hadn’t occurred to me, nor seemingly anyone of the nearly 100 people at the bus stop to check twitter for information. Yet it was there all along.
p.s. follow me on twitter!
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