emacs on a text console - please help me overcome the shock

[rdiezmail-emacs]

Hi all:

I'm a "normal" GUI computer user, I've used things like Delphi, Eclipse, gedit, 
Notepad++ and Visual Studio all my life. I've also been using emacs for some 
time under Ubuntu and under Windows.
It took me a while to set it up with "standard" behaviour, like shift+arrows 
for text selection and so on, I found the cua mode to be helpful. Every now and 
then, I even click on the menus with the mouse. However, I've written some 
simple, copy-paste lisp too,
so I'm not just a standard mouse user. In fact, my .emacs file has grown much 
more than I ever thought it would.  8-)


Now I have to work on a remote server via SSH, and the connection is not fast 
enough to tunnel X Windows over it, so I have to switch to console mode with 
"emacs -nw".

The console mode has been a shock. There is no mouse at all. I cannot navigate 
the menus as usual, menu-bar-open is weird and unfriendly. But, worst of all, 
some key combinations do not work well.

I don't want to use the ESC key as a prefix for anything, and that is normally 
fine under X Windows. I mean, most of the time, if I press ESC, it just makes 
the current panel full screen, or it aborts what I'm doing. However, in the 
console I have to press ESC three times. How can I make ESC react at the first 
press?

I also use F2 to set bookmarks, and F2 alone continues to work, but Ctrl+F2 
does not. There are many other key combinations that don't work properly.

The remote server is Ubuntu 11.04, and I'm root, I can configure anything I 
want, including terminal types. But I just don't know enough. I've googled 
about it, but all instructions I found are
so dreadfully complicated. I keep thinking, surely this is a normal scenario: 
SSH to Ubuntu, run emacs on that console. Is there a web site with simple 
instructions on how to fix those
keyboard issues? Or can anybody give me easy-to-follow tips here?

Please copy me on the answers, as I'm not subscribed to this list.

Many thanks in advance,
  R. Diez