Patience is the most important thing I’ve taken away from my relationship with Jenny. I’m generally not a patient person, often throwing shadow punches whenever my internet connection won’t load. I will also leave a place if the line looks too long even if the waiting time is shorter than it took for me to get there. Time is a valuable thing to me and in many aspects of life I’m not about to sacrifice even a moment.

The best example from my relationship with Jenny in learning to be more patient comes from our Skype sessions. We Skype often, but not as much as you might think. In fact, in a good week, we get two days of Skype time.

The time difference along with being generally busy people makes it tough to find a time of the day where we’re both available to drop everything and focus solely on each other. Jenny’s snailnet is also one of the roadblocks we face as the wee hours of the morning is often the only time available when her connection cooperates.

Recently, and my use of that word extends a few months back in history, we’ve been lucky to Skype for more than four minutes at a time although our most recent attempts haven’t been very strong. We call this the four minute Skype curse as many of our sessions freeze at this point and Jenny has to re-call me. We call it a curse because between the two of us we’re pretty sure witches exist and are out to get us.

It was extremely frustrating at first. Now, we embrace the poor hand life has dealt us when it comes to communicating online through video messaging.

Because the internet service in the Philippines is so weak we usually blame Jenny for our disconnections from Skype. I’m not sure if it’s fully her fault as my computer is nearing its 6th birthday. Whoever is to blame, and we must point the finger at someone, it’s rare Jenny and I get beyond four minutes in a conversation before technology intervenes.

At this point it’s not a big deal to us. We look at the time in our conversations and expect it to fail soon after. We do our best to pick up the conversation right from where it ended, but sometimes we’re stuck trying to remember. By the time we do, Skype has frozen again. The process repeats and Jenny and I wonder why we even bother.

But then she calls me back again and we remember all over again why we do try.