SILLY THEORIES !          - 9/ 6/ 2011      <--Prev : Next-->


There is a well known idiom - "You cannot teach an old dog new tricks". Well, I have disproved that silly theory !!

Twenty years ago in spite of my stiff and unrelenting resistance, HeeHoo eventually managed to introduce me to mobile phones and I soon became fairly au fait with my old "brick nokkia", So confident was I with my symbian life that when he talked of upgrading me to an iPhone, I went into what could have been construed as a mild modular panic !!

I had grown fond of my old brick nokkia, for one thing, the keys were large enough for my fingers, I could even use them by braille during power cuts, and I liked the size of the point 18 font. I was quite electronically comfortable in my Thomas Pynchon life - (Thomas Pynchon is writer of pessimistic novels about life in a technologically advanced society fyi.)

I had no need to progress any further with my technical "larning", not that I am a Luddite you understand, I am just happy in my blissfully technologically challenged ignorance.

It was only when my beautiful niece Danielle, looked askance at my brick, and my family were busy sending each other messages for free on their iphones, that I decided to take that "giant leap for mankind" and take up HeeHoo's kind offer. I also liked that fact that iphones take amazing photographs.

HeeHoo does not suffer fools easily, and I knew it would be a long road, definitely a test for our 32 year old marriage, but I gallantly braved his fond but exasperated abuse at my obtuseness, and soldiered forth into the wonderful world of the iphone.

Fortunately I had an ally in brother-in-law David, who would gently, patiently, with long suffering good humour, lead me through the vagaries of this darling little new fangled gem. SheHoo Must Sing was tenderly helpful too for about twenty seconds !! She downloaded all the "Apps" for me and tests me frequently and unrelentingly.

Slowly, surely, inexorably, I mastered the darn thing although often falling by the wayside and deliberately "losing" it in my hand bag and reverting to the brick instead.

Now after two long months of tuition, I have to begrudgingly admit that the iphone does have some amazing electronic assets, not the least being the fact that its almost impossible to text whilst driving!! It was a miraculous journey of cyber discovery into the pixilated world where other folk have lived for some time now. The word "Apps" found its way into my vocabulary. I learned to navigate the wonderful worlds of wifi, twitter and facebook, I ventured into linkeden, shazam and ibooks.

I am now a complete woman, I have Sasol ebirds on my desktop so I can call up bird sounds when I need them, I can talk and text for free on Skype and Viber and I can watch my Apple shares climbing daily! I now have a dictionary constantly at my fingertips, I have the Urban Dictionary so I can keep up with my nieces and nephews !! "Words up kids" I can now say with confidence !

I can now "walk with kings and not lose my common touch" as I can speak "MBAese", "We are aggressively leveraging existing assets to affect a paradigm shift interdepartmental synergy." Humpff take that !! I am no longer on the peripheral of my technologically advanced family .. I am now gloriously and undoubtedly ONE OF THEM.

---