I don't know what was happening yesterday, but my WiFi connection was insanely slow. Naturally, it had to happen when I was awaiting an important email, and my Gmail was taking so long to load.

Once again, Gmail to the rescue! You can now enable an Inbox Preview [1] lab that will show you the first 10 emails in your inbox, before your entire Gmail account appears. This way, if you have a bad Internet connection like me, you'll be able to see if you have any new emails — without having to wait half an hour for the page to completely load.