I would ask people for the time

AOG, Madrid

A few months ago, maybe as far back as last September, my watch's battery ran out. 

I did nothing for a couple of days thinking, or rather, hoping in the most procrastinating manner, that I would get around to changing the battery in a couple of days.

A couple of days turned into a couple of months, and a couple of months turned into roughly 9 months. 

I have now been without a wristwatch for almost a year and, yes, there have been many times when I have missed it. 

Last November I took it to a local watch shop only to be told that, because of the type of watch it was, they could not do it. 

A couple of months ago, a lady from work told me that a relative of her husband's could change the battery. 

A couple of days later she said she was really sorry, but, "Being an Omega, he doesn't have the proper equipment to open it up". 

When I lived in London, changing the watch's battery had never been a problem. I had a local jeweler who changed it in a couple of days, and it was not very expensive. 

Getting Around

Of course, these people also exist in Madrid, but they are not within walking distance, and my life these days is all about walking distance. 

Having been spoiled as a child and a teenager growing up in America, where I drove everywhere and had a passion for cars, these days I live without the benefit of personal transport and rely on public transportation to get anywhere. Buses and subways are my method of braving long distances.

When I lived in London and I had a car -my much beloved 1988 Volvo station wagon being the last of the crop, I would move about the city using public transport too. 

However, come the weekend, out came the car. 

Drive here, there. 

To the West End or South London, to Windsor's Great Park or the art galleries in Hampstead or Whitechapel.

But in Madrid, I don't own a car. 

I really don't need it, so public transport has become, after walking on foot, my preferred mode of moving about town.

Also, there's the element of fatigue. You, the reader, may be able to relate to this. Why is it that as children we had humongous reserves of energy but, as adults, we can hardly make it through the day?

It is a recurring theme that, when I get out of work, I make it home, and do my best not to fall asleep on the sofa. I have zero energy. 

So, when faced with the task of taking my watch and finding a jeweler who can change the battery, I just can't spare the few 'joules' I may have in my body doing anything other than dinner, and, maybe, doing some reading. 

I also want to add changing the channel to that list. 

Alternative Trinkets

So I live with no watch. 

Oh, but you own only one watch? No, I own five watches. All five have no battery, but it is the Omega -the one my mother bought as a birthday gift years ago- that I use on a daily basis. 

My wrist is now so used to not having a watch, that the pale, white, mark I had on it, has disappeared and now my entire arm is one color.

So, what have I done in the mean time? 

Well, when I was younger and this happened, I would ask people for the time. 

But now that I'm an adult, I ask no one for the time. 

Instead, I use my old mobile/ cell phone when I need to know what time it is. 

I don't have an iPhone or a smart Android phone (other than work's BlackBerry) but I think that my regular, old-fashioned, mobile Samsung mobile phone (which slides open and I love that), is apparently more important a machine than my watch.

Eventually, I'm not sure when, I'll replace the battery and that will have been that.

But after I do I'll continue to carry a mobile/cell phone on me.

 
I'm not sure about when it is that I'll stop, if ever, carrying a phone on me. It has become one of those indispensable machines without which we could not really function very well.

No, I don't think that my life would end if I didn't have a phone -and I have thought about not having a land line at all- but, curiously enough, I am aware of how big a part of our daily lives it has become. 

Just like the iPad.

I wake up and, before I go to work, I turn the radio on and start to quickly peruse the morning news. 

I think our lives these days are 'connected' to something, for better or for worse.

And where will it all lead?

Two days ago I was having dinner with some friends (walking distance from home). 

One of them, an American cartoonist living in Spain, mentioned very casually that people will "eventually grow tired of the internet and will move on to the next thing". 

Yes, it was one of those "excuse me... what?" moments. 

Will the internet change... or disappear?  

Well, yes, it changes all the time. 

The internet in 2013 and in 1993 are two very different beings. 

And, like television, it seems to be here to stay. 

Will people grow tired of it?  If so, what will come next? 

Yes, I'm sure that someone, somewhere, will be thinking of it, but I'm not sure about how successful they will be with their idea in my lifetime. 

After all, Da Vinci thought about submarines in the XVI century (1515 I think), but we didn't really see those until 400 years later...  

Haunted in Alabama

AOG, Madrid

It is a fact of modern life that the more gadgets we purchase to make our lives easier, the more complicated they become. How many of us are still in the process (20 years late) of setting the clock on the VCR? Or programming the thing? Hundreds, nay, thousands of us.

Technological companies, in their zeal to make us buy their products, normally add a zillion features which none of us really needs. Or wants.

I remember a few years ago when my sister bought me a mobile phone as a birthday gift. It was a Nokia clunker with a green screen and an antennae which stuck out on one side. Very de riguer at the time. I loved that phone.

You could change the cover to suit your mood. It stayed with me for years. Then, unfortunately, it broke. I don’t know what happened to it. It never came with me on vacation (unlike now) and it lived a pretty good life. I was very upset when I had to have it put down.

Given that, by then, I was hooked on wireless communication, like the rest of the planet, I had to find a replacement. My phone provider at the time (One to One, or as my sister lovingly called it, One to None) had accrued many points on my behalf.

It had also decided unilaterally to cancel my initial contract ( I used to get 30 minutes free calls per month for, I believe, ₤ 12.00 a month or something like that). I was incensed but they had a plan. I could get an upgrade of up to ₤80. Right. What a nightmare that turned out to be.

I went to local phone house on Victoria street in London. And so it began. First obstacle- price plans. “You get 350 free minutes every month and 30 free texts for ₤ 45 a month”. No.

“We can offer you 20 personal numbers that you can call for a reduced rate and 25 free texts, and 100 free minutes”. “If I don’t use the minutes, do they carry over to the next month” “NO!” Then No. At the time, I didn’t have 20 people who I would call that often. I still don’t. Do normal people do? But I digress…

So it went for hours. I cannot recall what plan I choose. It didn’t matter. Either way I was a puppet in their hands.

Once the plan was chosen, thus began the choosing of the phone. My original model had been discontinued long ago. So I had to pick up a new one.

“Basic, not too heavy”, said I foolishly. “We have this model for ₤ 99.99” No.

“This model comes with X, Y, Z, and it can connect you to the universe if you want it to”.

“How much does a connection to the universe cost?” “On your price plan, ₤3,000.00 per minute”.

No.

“What does this one do?”

“That one is a direct line with God and the President of Nike Sports”.

“Oh…how much? I like the color”

“₤700.00 and it comes with an earplug free of charge!” No.

Eventually, I settled on an Eriksson that had a tiny little joystick in the middle. If possible, even more plasticky that the Nokia. But lighter, and smaller. And it had games.

Then one day that phone broke just outside the Isle of Wight on a ferry. So the whole cycle started again.

I will short hand it. “Do you have one that just makes calls and has no features?” “NO!”.

So now I am on my 4^th phone and my 3^rd Mobile (cell) phone company. Can do hundreds of things, including taking bad quality photographs and the ability to somehow play MP3 files if I ever get around to conjuring the Mobile Phone Gods to show me how to hook up the thing to the computer to download some music.

Something I dread doing. I am still recovering from the whole iPod fiasco.

Yesterday, I was talking to a friend in Alabama. He has moved home to a nice large house outside Auburn, Alabama. He’s there for a year. And, oh yes, the place is haunted he tells me assuredly. About 12 years ago a woman died in that house, and the lady is manifesting herself through modern day telecommunications and IT apparatus.

She plays havoc on his computers, cell phones (mobiles) etc. Things come on and off at random. It would appear that the Tivo is too advanced for her to tamper with. At least for now.

I know one day I’ll get a call because the microwave answered the phone and blew a fuse whilst trying to download a movie on the laptop which sits next to the television which switched itself off as my friend was about to call me across the ocean whilst sitting on his Jacuzzi.

Such is modern life.

A day without mobile phones... not ! !

AOG, Madrid

Yesterday, numerous Consumer Groups in Spain staged a "Day without mobiles" (cell phones for those of you in the Americas). Was it done in conjunction with some international protest against global warming, or the health risks to the brain of mobile radio waves? No. It was to do with pricing.

Last year the Spanish parliament, (the Cortes) passed a law which forbade the usual practice of "rounding off" tariffs, charges, minutes, etc in Spain.

Up until then, and if you have a car you can relate to this, you would go to a car park, and be charged a full hour even if you had gone over the hour by a few minutes. The same with telephone calls. The government was obviously trying to help consumers and wanted to teach a few companies a lesson.

But, as the saying in Spain goes, he who makes the law, creates the loop hole. Mobile telephone companies in Spain- or at the very least Movistar, owned by Telefónica- have hit back by raising the cost of a phone call based on future losses. Spain already has one of the highest mobile phone call tariffs in Europe.

According to today's news, Vodafone and Orange gave yesterday's event little notoriety and declared that network usage had been the same as that of "any other Thursday".

Joan Clos, Spain's Minister of Industry, did declare that he had "endeavored to refrain from using his mobile" as a sign of solidarity with consumer groups.

I for one only found out that the event was happening at all when I got to work and began to surf the newswires. Although the consumer groups in charge say the event was a success, I have my doubts. Not enough publicity had been given to it. If no one knows the event is happening, the proverbial tree may as well stay put in the forest, because no one even knows it is there to make a sound.

Nonetheless, I agree fullheartedly with the move and, should they ever stage another, will make sure my mobile remains switched off.