Read a few weeks back that it has been 10 years since iphone was launched, that's the device that spawned the 'smartphone' era. Having any smartphone in pocket has totally transformed our lives for the better I believe. There is suddenly renewed discussion and flurry of articles examining the role of smartphones the good, the bad and the ugly part. I for one have always been an early adopter for these technological advances and think it has really really helped make our lives better. It is of course upto individual on how to effectively use the phone in their lives.
I wanted to cover this in a couple of posts as smartphone which I will just call as phone going forward has helped me. But a personal anecdote to get started
If I needed to go somewhere on my own, I used to ask my friends for directions, bus route/number, some landmarks etc to reach my destination.There used to be an era not too long back when phone used to be something for just talking. But things have changed rapidly in last 4-5 years, everything is available online. Any information you need you can get it online through message boards, blogs or social media. Availability of information and quality of info became even better and more easy to access with advent of smartphones
While I used to depend on lot of people I knew in any place I moved into to find my way around including Seattle when I moved there in 2013, moving to Dallas in 2015 was different. I did not know too many people here, had no friends at all here. So everything from apartment hunt, restaurants, grocery stores was all identified only most often through phone.
It was early Dec and the winter was just setting in and as expectant dad was trying my best to support my wife who was in the 2nd trimester of her pregnancy. It was a weekday and suddenly in the afternoon she told me she wanted to eat a hot pretzel. Now keeping my wife happy always is my goal and during pregnancy was doubly focused on making her happy and satisfying any craving during this stage. But it happened to be a week-day and though both of us were working from home and it was not exactly the busiest time of the year it was still a working day. None of that was going to stop me even though she immediately said it was ok, we can go and eat during weekend. It was almost 3 PM and I had my next conference call at 4 PM and the shop in question was in a mall nearby which meant I could make the round trip in 30-40 mins. So I could easily go, order and pick up hot pretzel and get back and eat and still have some time to spare before next call.
So I set out on mission pretzel and as I was driving the distance of 5 miles to the nearby mall the radio was playing some 90s Hindi film music adding to my already upbeat mood in having managed to sneak out during middle of a working day. All was fine until I reached the mall which was a huge sprawling property as land is never in short supply in Texas. So this meant the parking was at ground level and unfortunately the entrance usually has lot of visitors and hence parking is always difficult. It was no different that day, as it was cold I did not fancy parking far away and walking to the mall entrance. Then at the very last minute I saw a vacant slot at ideal place from corner of my eye. With great joy I swung my car at last minute to the slot and I think it was combination of quick sharp turn and my heady celebratory mood and plain dumb luck perhaps but what happened was I parked and the steering wheel seemed to have moved too much that it just got stuck and decided to stay put.
I was not sure what happened and got out and car seemed to be parked fine though wheels were not aligned, but I had a feeling something was not right with the way I parked. So went in and tried to turn the steering wheel to align the front wheels and found that the thing was stuck. Was it broken? I was not sure, I had no idea what just happened. Suddenly things had changed. The car was not new but was doing pretty well and major breakdowns meant lot of money for a car like that. Something I could certainly do without at any point especially at that time. I had no clue what to do and first impulse was to call home but did not want my wife to worry and feel guilty about sending me out. Then there was that meeting I was supposed to attend via phone in sometime.and it will look very bad if I did not turn up as I did not inform anyone before stepping away. It was cold outside but I was feeling hot near my neck, you are just nervous I told myself and you are panicking. Even at that stage I knew standing there dazed and confused was not going to help. So went into the car and just sat back to think for a minute on what to do next and take a few deep breaths while I was at it.
Then I turned to my trusted friend - my phone and started 'googling' about this, just took me a few seconds to type the right words and the friendly auto-suggest did the rest and I had some promising links infront of me on screen. One of which was a youtube video on how to fix the steering if it got locked. 2 mins of video watching later, I got the car steering unlocked and managed to smile at the ridiculousness of the solution. It was unreal how quickly the problem got fixed, it was infact like having a friend around right when you need. That pretzel sure tasted even better than ever before
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