I met up with a friend the other day, and had a lovely day despite her being quiet at some points. True to form, I babbled inanities in the mistaken belief that one might strike home and lead to a renewed conversation. Little did I know that she was rolling her eyes internally. Cutting to the chase, here are excerpts about me from her blog entry.

I'd say they are not wholly undeserved.

"So I found it shocking that a friend of mine didn't know her way around her phone... she's still using the damned thing even though it's big enough to be, as the older folk call it, giah lai kah tzeem eh tzng tao (a brick you use for cracking crabs)..."

"We tried to send some of my ring tones to her phone, except she didn't know how it worked, which elicited another slow-mo-turn-with-incredulous-stare action sequence from me."

"It's a strange fear of the technophobes that they'll somehow cause the device to spontaneously combust if they pressed the wrong buttons, although common sense suggests that installing Explode buttons on consumer electronics is probably a bad idea. "

"To me, being technologically backward when one isn't robbed of the ability to keep up with the times suggests a certain, well, laziness. Being proud of not knowing anything about tech stuff just screams a fear of being ostracized and told to stand in a corner until they master their pre-polyphonic phones. "

Sound familiar? Yes, it should to those who know me, or Gloria's sister. The person whose PDA phone is trying to commit suicide, and whose top of the range, S$200 camera is held together with scotch tape. But to the people who say: Just get a new one! I say: you give me the money then I buy a new one lah!

Those very same people will then ask, 'How come you got so much money to go australia holiday then?'

It's a question of priorities. What people chose to spend money on is indicative not just of their personalities but their circumstances. Right now I have a lot of time and no money. I'm collecting experiences, not consumer durables. I have the rest of my working life to acquire those things, as and when I want them.

I've written an email to my friend and it pretty much sums up how I feel about techy gadgets:

My incompetence must seem staggering to you. I think I ham up my self-deprecation (not just to you but in general) because it's an easy way to get people to laugh and relax as they feel superior to me in this respect.

What can I say? We all know self-deprecation is an art. The point is that people in the know know that you are really just pretending to be inferior, while the people on the outside let their guard down because they think you are a fool. Also, kids love it.

The truth is, I do know how to use my phone. I've been using it for years. Obviously.

I don't know how to use the more complicated functons like the pdf and excel programs because I cannot foresee ever needing to use them. I don't know how to put mp3 ringtones on it because I have never wanted to. I know how to use exactly the functions that I want to, or need to.

I have this phone because it was free. I would never have chosen it on my own. Why the hell would I need a PDA type phone? I know how to use the connectivity functions, I can surf the net, do emails, chat, play games, use the planner.

But I don't.

Because I don't actually want to do these things on my phone.

Maybe I am actually just bloody irritating and should just get on with it without pretending that I don't know how to do the techy thing in question. But oh! It is so much fun when my sister gets exasperated with me and does it instead. I like to think it's rewarding for her to be able to help me with some trifling task. Then again, maybe I should just ask her to do stuff for me out of the goodness of her heart. (haha fat chance)

Actually the part of the entry that really made me sigh wasn't what I've already pasted above. I wouldn't be affected by people saying I was a bloody fool due to my technological incompetence. After all, gadgets don't really matter to me one way or the other. As I said, the ones I have now are perfectly adequate for my purposes. Anything I should come to require in the future I will deal with then. But then again, I'm not likely to need anything more. Most gadgets are entertainment-related so I won't need to use them for work. I already know how to use a blackberry.

The part that made me sad was, 'And technology is the one thing that shows one's adaptability and speed of processing information more than anything else. Being able to pick up a console of any kind and navigate around it has become a basic skill, and those who don't have it have a much more difficult time than those who do.'

I'm grieved to see that she links ability to learn to use new technologies so closely with the general skill of adaptability. (although such a linkage would come in extremely useful when writing CVs btw)

Referring to a less tech-savvy older person, she said, 'While personality and motivation helped, I think the basic ability to adapt and change and learn was something that made him a lot more successful than his peers.'

I completely agree. From experience, four years of achieving my personal goals (of getting a good job, doing well in uni, making genuine local friends) in a foreign country (and dealing with colleagues, landlords, bosses, government, banks, companies, judges, examiners, clients, students, members of the public, ) requires a whole lot of adaptability. But having to adapt my IT skills to different systems is really at the bottom of my list of things which are hard to adapt to.

I heed this warning call to be open to change and learning. But... wait! My recent life so far has been about that. And I'm not complaining about being less successful than anybody else I know. Perhaps objectively, I am. After all, I am only a shop girl. But I'm a happy shopgirl.