How fast is your network link, both in terms of throughput and latency for the sites you visit? The OP is browsing over a 256 kbps connection of unknown origin. They are likely impacted by latency and throughput constraints, which will exacerbate issues with sites that require a lot of requests or are resource heavy.

Making a site fast boils down to:

1) Making sure your server responds quickly.

2) Reducing the number of requests required for a page to load.

3) Reducing the number of bytes required for a page to load.