The Calamity That Wasn't

The speed with which the new technology - which, of course, isn't anything like new to most people these days - comes to dominate the routines of one's existence is extraordinary. I haven't possessed a smart phone for very long, and I don't particularly like possessing one. It's sort of useful for accessing on-line news and the like quickly, but I could do without it for that purpose. The Google map has helped me a couple of times when I was lost, but I could always find my way around in the past eventually, and I don't terribly mind being lost anyway. I enjoy listening to music through it but, again, I don't see that as crucial to my life. Yet when I came close to losing my phone on the way back from New Zealand I suddenly realised I desperately need it now in terms of the various work-related message groups I belong to and all the contacts that have somehow found their way into it. There are a lot of these, despite me being essentially an anti-social being.

I'm not sure how all this happened, but it did and I, like everyone else, have to live with it.

Actually the story of the almost catastrophic loss of the phone serves as a useful reminder to me of how dependent on others we really are. I'd put the blighter in one of those trays that airport security demand we put our belongings in to scan them, or whatever they do to them when the stuff goes through that tunnel. The phone was in the same tray as my laptop going through the security to get into Auckland Airport on the way from Queenstown and I had other stuff in another tray. I contrived to pick everything up, except the phone and was happily walking away, congratulating myself on my efficiency in getting through fairly effortlessly when a guy, another passenger, not an official, rushed over to me and asked whether I'd left the phone behind, which he had somehow spotted. The fact that he charitably went to all that trouble to help me out still warms my heart.