Modern Life!
It goes without saying that some aspects of living in the 21st century are pleasing and extremely satisfactory. Life is made easier in so many ways 0 and in this country we are lucky in having our National Health Service, which, with every passing year, is finding new cures and procedures. I am particularly aware of this at the moment as I have to go through major surgery on my ankle next month, which would not have been available a few years back and also would have been prohibitively expensive in any other country. However, in spite of all the positive things about modern life there are some aspects that I find positively infuriating. Sometimes it seems there are almost too many choices put before us and with advances in technology moving so quickly, there are some of us who are finding it hard to keep up and also don’t actually feel it is necessary to do so..
Without I hope sounding too much like a moaner from ‘The Oldie‘, there are two areas recently which I have tried my patience. This is quite apart from the endless options and ‘musack’ we have to endure when making a telephone call. My first gripe is with replacing light bulbs. The light bulb in my bedside lamp blew so off I went to get a replacement. I was immediately confronted with row upon row of possible choices. There were halogen, small baton, large baton, small screw, large screw, long life etc. etc. There was such a mixture of shapes and sizes it took me at least 15 minutes to find one that I thought would fit the bill. Such a waste of time and do we really need all these options?
The next problem I had was with my mobile phone. I have long been with Blackberry with which I was entirely happy, until eventually my old mobile became unreliable. I was told in my network shop that I was due for an upgrade, but that they no longer ‘did’ Blackberry. What they didn’t tell me was that I could have bought a new Blackberry for myself and remained on the same contract. This oversight proved disastrous. I was given a new make which was a touch phone. They told me proudly how it had many new features including the fact it could be taken down into several feet of water. None of these did I need. For the next three weeks I struggled with endless problems and had to re-visit the shop several times in order to get these sorted out. They kept telling me I would get used to it and really appreciate all the special features. But I didn’t. I just wanted a mobile that was reliable and that I could use for all the basics. The final straw came when I inadvertently hit ‘airplane mode’ and was cut off from all outside communication for a whole weekend. So I gave up and bought myself a Blackberry again and am now in the process of selling the other.
This isn’t meant to be an advertising campaign for Blackberry. It is just meant to indicate that sometimes the simpler options are what suits some of us and we should be allowed to keep things uncomplicated without being forced to keep up with all the modern technology!