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| The kids got it sorted |
If it’s hot, the kids have got it. Like yellow T-shirts this summer. They are “it”.
It’s taken me a few years, maybe ten, but I have just started to get used to mobile phones in movies. Y’know like the villain is out doing some villainous thing and then the goodfella finds out and the Head of Police calls him up on his mobile…
Maybe a bad analogy for a travel blog, but fact is they don’t meet up anymore: it’s just a call on the little plastic thing in the pocket. No telegram (Must stop bad guy stop). No butler walking out to the pool with a yellow telephone, one of those old one’s with a separate talky-bit and hand-piece, holding the ready call aloft requesting that there is a call for Mr Bond or whoever is on the job that week. No one even sits in an office or a house anymore, it all happens while they’re out there, just doing stuff, and then they change their mind and do other stuff.
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| Talky bit and hand piece |
Which goes to show how life is just like the movies, cos the kids do that too, always changing their minds and just doing stuff.
So like in Casablanca when that fella says to that Sheila “We’ll always have Paris”, well now he could save himself the trouble and just send her a text (WLL ALWYS HV PRS), simple as that, job done. Cue closing credits, fade out. Romantic, eh?
In my early coming-to-terms-with mobile phones, on a visit to the Big Smoke down in old Sydney-town, I fast discovered I was dead-in-the-water without one of the little buggers ready in my pocket for the constant winds of change wrought by the city-slickers caprice.
“Where were you at the pub the other night?” I’d ask when I caught up with my mate a couple of days later.
“Oh, yeah, we decided to go to the other pub across the road after we had a bit of pizza down the wharf, “ he coolly replied. “Why didn’t you call me on my mobile, mate?”
I probably would if I had taken that bank loan out and remembered to bring a sack full of coins to for all the time I’d be spending at the pay phones to keep up with what they are all doing once they changed their minds and then changed them again for good measure. Whatever happened to good old plans, like being a fella of your word and sticking to it?
World to Jack: It’s a TXT thing
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| The power of the thumb, circa 1975 |
So its not just those Wall-Street-style ’80s stockbroker-types shouting “buy buy, sell sell” on their brick-sized mobile fashion accessories. No, no.
Every kid has one now and they’re not all on some plan where you owe your house by the end of the week. Fact is, most mobiles are cheaper than the house line, though this probably comes not as a surprise to you gentle reader, as its Jack that’s getting the update just now.
So again, it’s not just said brokers txting each other with C U IN PARIS 4 LNCH, it’s the kids that have got the power now, too.
And what with the old school power of the thumb (does anybody remember hitchhiking?), you put the two together and you have a powerful recipe for Spontaneity. This is where Jack hits his stride.
Jack gets with the program
So the dude is thinking of going somewhere, say he’s got a mate there, and doesn’t know how to get to said place, where to stay or exactly what to do. That’s pretty close to a plan y’reckon? Grab your laptop (it’s not in backpack? Get with the program, the kid’s got it covered), steal some wireless from a hotspot café or a connection that some network has left unsecured, grab some bandwidth and maybe a quick spot of spamming is in order?
So just get on Skhype, Fakebook, or whatever it is that spins your lid in that whole world of “social networking” that has become so en vogue these days (maybe even Micepays if you’re the musical kind) and message the man with the plan or whoever it is that you want to find. They’ll get the message just in time, and just to be sure maybe sling out a few txts because you can always get that on the run with the power in your pocket
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| The future. Jack has seen it. |
If you’re not sure of where it is, be it round the corner, interstate or across the continent, you can Google map yourself stupid, get all the details on which corner is which, or just grab a bus or train timetable. As the kids know, a guide book is just something that some old fogey wrote to make a buck, is probably out-of-date by the time he got back to the next comfortable couch and probably has about enough looseness in the whole planning as a bolt in a precision-piece of equipment - like not much.
Kinda inflexible, or even a bit stiff and not meant to be messed with… Like Mr McNeely said before, maybe the fella hasn’t even been there himself? So who’s to trust that. Besides, who wants to weigh down that bag with some brick that was written before last year?
So by now the fleet-footed kids have made the way by the train/bus/road of choice and its looking like the way is clear. Go west young man, or just go, the word’ll come back once the front door to opportunity is ready to be knocked on in the next city.
Train is booked out? Jump on and work it out with the conductor once you’re going - if its anything like the TGV to or from Paris they always seem to say its booked out 48 hours before it leaves. So, as the way is made across all borders there’s been a chance to dust off the next language of choice, maybe even friendships made and the nights’ accommodation sorted and in-hand. Saving money by going tomorrow as some may say - how can you measure the cost of opportunity lost? And if there’s next to no money already, standing still is costly enough.
MT @ 5 4 DRNK W M8S - solved, once there, traveling light, in comes the answer, and just by chance, it’s a drink at the pub with mates. No worries. Like there ever was any, eh?
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