Recently I moved away from paper maps. Instead I use the map in my phone. It's funny how in this age of interconnectedness, it's more natural to see someone with a phone in their hand. If someone has a phone in their hand, they could be reading facebook, checking messages from their friends, trying to figure out their next appointment. If you have a map in your hand, you're a tourist.
My friend from the MBA program (SW, if I ever remember what this initial stood for. He's the Daytona driver who got us safely through the gorge in South France) also introduced me to the wonders of GPS. Now instead of peering at street signs, I just move the winking blue dot that is me along the black line that is the direction of where I should go. No need to know what is right and what is left either - you can orientate the map to turn as you turn.
I kind of miss navigating by paper maps though. There's something physical about reading a road sign and comparing it to your map to see where you are. There's something about making the wrong turn, realising it fast enough and making a backtrack.
It's like how I get a little upset with my friends who play with their phones while they are on the train. The landscape rushing around you is gorgeous. You will never see it again because you are a tourist. Yet you keep looking at this little device in your hand.
In the same way, I suppose I should take my own advice. I should stop looking at the computer screen and the phone screen and go out and experience real life. But the phone is useful for getting a direction to start walking in...
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Some other thoughts that I had was that I should start something like what I had in secondary school. Like how Literature lessons with its hidden computers were a sign to start typing in this blog, I need a similar trigger for blogging now. There are so many thoughts that I have in my head, and some of them need to be recorded before they disappear.
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