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A Day Without A Phone

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Just after my daughter left to go home the other night, I realized that she had forgotten her iPhone at our place. I picked it up and asked my husband what I should do. I mean, I couldn’t CALL her.

Then I looked out the window and saw her drive up again. Phew!

She told me that her Apple watch had warned her that it was no longer connected to her phone, and that made her realize she’d left it behind.

Holy geez, technology, eh? I could have used that little trick a couple of weeks ago.

My husband and I were heading over to the mainland, walking on the ferry to spend the day with family. But it wasn’t until we sat down in the waiting area at the BC Ferries terminal that I realized I’d forgotten my phone at home.

It’s not the first time I’ve left my phone at home, but this time I was going to be without it until we got back late that night. So ALL DAY.

Isn’t a strange feeling to not have your phone? I mean, you feel kind of lost, and a slight case of panic sets in. Sometimes more than a slight case.

What if I miss a news alert? What if someone texts me? What if…I don’t know…ANYTHING happens with my phone and I DON’T KNOW ABOUT IT?

I looked around the waiting area at the terminal and saw that at least half of the people there were staring at their phones. I started to feel jealous.

Then I thought, jealous? I laughed to myself. I mean, come on Irene. You lived a huge chunk of your life without a cell phone! What’s the big deal?

I looked around again and challenged myself to have a different kind of day. And this time, looking at all of those people glued to their phones, I started to feel just a little bit holier than thou.

A lot of them didn’t see the ferry come in to dock. Or the flock of seagulls swooping around, chasing each other in the sunshine. Most didn’t even realize the ferry had arrived until the announcement came on.

They may have briefly looked up to see if the passenger line was moving, but then their heads dropped back down to their phones again.

When I come to think of it, that’s a pretty common sight these days; heads staring down at phones. Especially with younger people.

I go for walks at least twice a day around our neighbourhood and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen someone look up from their phone, surprised to see me walking towards them.

And then there are the ones who even dare to cross the street with their heads down.

I’ve noticed that a number of times while I’m driving. People literally walking in all kinds of traffic, oblivious to everything but that darn phone.

This distraction causes what some experts say is a “loss of situational awareness.” And it can create all kinds of dangerous scenarios.

For instance, there was a story in the Washington Post recently about a seventh grader in Warren, Michigan named Dillon who, along with his school mates, was travelling on their school bus.

He was the only one who noticed when something went wrong. The school bus driver had fainted, and the bus started drifting to one side.

Dillon ran up, grabbed the steering wheel and stepped on the brake.

Why was he the only one who noticed? Because he didn’t have a phone. The rest of the students on the bus were staring down at theirs and didn’t realize what was happening until the bus jerked to a halt.

As Dillon said “What else are you going to when you don’t have a phone? You’re going to look at people. You’re going to notice stuff.”

When we found our seats on the ferry, I had a book to read so I did that for awhile. And I looked out the window in wonder at this amazing place we live. The water, the islands, the mountains. Spectacular.

Had I been swiping through Twitter or Facebook, I might have missed all that. Just as about half of the ferry passengers actually did.

I did notice one thing that irritated me more on that ferry trip. Oh my lord, can people please learn how to turn off their car alarms? Who’s going to steal your car ON THE FERRY?

At dinner with our family later that day, I was completely engaged in the conversation. There were no annoying news alerts beeping on my phone to distract me, no temptations to check it “just in case”.

On the ferry ride home, I watched the hockey finals on the TV in the sitting area. Is it just me, or are half the games taken up with fighting? For pete’s sake, just score a bleeding goal!

But when we got home that night, I have to admit I ran into the house to look for my phone. It was a huge relief when I finally had it in my eager little hands.

What did I miss? Some news alerts about what some crazy politician said, and the final score of the hockey game. Big deal. Already knew that.

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If I Had $55 Million

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Who remembers the hit song “If I Had A Million Dollars” by the Barenaked Ladies? When that song was released back in 1988, a million bucks was a lot of dough. One line says “If I had a million dollars, I’d buy you a house.”

Yep, not these days. You’d be lucky to get a 5th wheel for that now.

I seriously think the only way my children will ever be able to buy a house is if I win the lottery. Or if I die soon so they can have MY house. I do play the B.C. Lottery every now and then just for fun, but my pension will only stretch so far.

A lot of us dream of winning the lottery, like local Scott Gurney did recently. We think about what we’d buy, where we’d travel, who else we’d share it with. But I think reality might not quite live up to the dream. (Although I wouldn’t be adverse to testing that theory…just to be sure.)

I did win $90 once. And my husband won $900. But when you add up what we must have spent on tickets up to that point…well, I think the lottery corporation came out ahead.

I knew someone many years ago who won the lottery at the tender age of 19. $100,000 was a lot of money back then and he was pretty excited. Needless to say, he learned a lot from that experience.

All kinds of new “friends” came out of the word work. He was buying everyone dinner and drinks all the time, blowing all kinds of money on whatever came to mind. And he eventually ended up bankrupt.

Nineteen is too young an age to really understand what money is or does. It’s one thing to grow up financially privileged, another to suddenly become the richest kid on the block.

But age doesn’t even matter.

The fact is that a LOT of people who win the lottery end up in dire straits. In the U.S., for instance, one third of people who win lotteries end up bankrupt after 3 to 5 years. And many lottery winners struggle with depression and suicide, or end up divorced.

We just don’t know how to deal with a big stack of cash.

I’m convinced that coming into a lot of money all of a sudden does something to the brain. Not just yours, but everyone else you know too. Some of the people around you become needy or greedy. You have to learn to say “no”, and that’s not easy.

Not only that, but when you win the lottery, your face gets splashed all over the place, complete with the giant cheque and the confetti. Everyone finds out who you are, so there’s no way you can just take your winnings and quietly slip away somewhere.

So, out come the scammers. There have already been a number of fake Facebook accounts set up pretending to be Scott Gurney, trying to swindle people out of their money one way or another. It’s disgusting.

I do wish him well and hope that, for the most part, he’s able to enjoy his winnings.

I’ve decided that I don’t really need to win the lottery. It seems like a lot more trouble than it’s worth, and I’m doing just fine, thank you very much.

What’s money anyway? There are some things you really can’t put a price on, like family, good health, great friends. A sunny day. What more could a person possibly need?

I’m already a winner!

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De-Influencing: The New Trend!

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Well, I don’t usually pay too much attention to new trends, but my curiosity was piqued the other day when I heard about something called “de-influencing”. Apparently “influencers”, those people you see pimping products on TikTok and the like, are becoming passé.

De-influencing is becoming a thing, and as of a couple of weeks ago, there were 160 million videos with the hashtag #deinfluencing on Tik Tok alone.

It’s going crazy out there!

If you don’t know what an “influencer” is, your gen is showing. Generation, that is.

Where it used to be Anne Murray promoting the bank or Mickey Mantle pushing smokes (okay, now MY gen is showing), lately it’s been celebrity wannabes looking for fame by creating videos of themselves trying all kinds of things.

But let’s get real. “Influencer” is really just a fancy word for advertiser. Everybody knows that the successful ones get paid very, very well for promoting stuff: trips, make-up, clothes, power tools, you name it.

The difference is that lots of people don’t realize they are being advertised TO. They just think they’ve seen the latest, greatest thing, and they’ve got to have it.

It’s Slinky! It’s Slinky! Who remembers that?

And there are plenty of companies and businesses willing to pay the big bucks to have these influencers, well, influence. Money, money, money. And lately, that’s what’s changing the game.

Right now, a lot of people, especially the younger ones, don’t have much money. Inflation has become a nightmare.

So in come the de-influencers. They’ve started creating videos telling you what NOT to waste your money on, what NOT to do. I don’t know, this all sounds really familiar to me…

Wait a minute! Now that I think of it, I am the original de-influencer! I must have told my kids a thousand times what not to do. And I definitely said “No!” to all the things they wanted me to buy them. I can confirm that I have been de-influencing since the 80’s!

I’m honestly thinking this new de-influencing thing might just be a scam. Maybe the de-influencers just want you to start trusting them before they end up selling you stuff just like the influencers do. More like a “don’t buy THAT, buy THIS” sort of thing.

Whatever.

I’ve never had Tik Tok on any of my devices, but whoever still does is asking for trouble. There are national security concerns, ongoing investigations and bans everywhere. You never know who might be able to access your personal information, so I would suggest you just get rid of it.

There, did I de-influence you? Yep. See how good I am?

With AI, Who Needs Creators?

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I was a Computer Operator back in 1982 when the Vancouver Public Library decided to automate their entire library system. Some library patrons were quite worried at the time about having their personal information stored somewhere where anybody could see it.

What a difference a few decades makes. Today, just having a Google account means you can literally be followed, and advertised to with “relevant” ads. And who-knows-who can get access to all kinds of information about you.

I don’t have anything against technology, obviously, having been witness to “Gutenberg Two”. That was what the computer was characterized as back then, in the book by David Godfrey. Gutenberg One was the printing press, invented by Johannes Gutenberg.

The printing press was a revolution in terms of information and the ability to access and spread it to whoever could read. The computer was another evolution in that sequence.

Artificial Intelligence, or AI, appears to be a revolution of another kind. And now it’s getting weird.

One of the latest apps, ChatGPT, is a chatbot that can “converse, create readable text on demand and create novel images and video”. It’s also stirring up trouble.

The creators of ChatGPT basically used material that was already out there to teach the bot how to create its own content.

Kids are have started using it to “write” essays in school. A new level of cheating. Those darn kids.

There’s a children’s book being marketed on Amazon that was created using ChatGPT. Even the illustrations are created by a text-to-image AI tool. It took the “creator” a weekend to put it together and start selling it.

Now my mind is racing. Maybe I won’t have to spend hours and hours on my writing ever again because ChatGPT can do it for me!

But what’s the point? When it comes to art, a text-to-image AI tool could never be a modern day Da Vinci. Or could it? And even worse, what if nobody cares?

Well, artists do.

In fact, there are two lawsuits against an AI company happening right now in the U.K. and in the U.S. Part of the argument in the U.K. suit initiated by Getty Images is that this AI company “illegally scraped” content from their website in order to train the tools to create images.

Lawyers for the artists in the suit say that this is breaking copyright and other laws, and they are suing for billions. They argue that “because the AI system only ingests images from others, nothing it creates can be original.”

Copying the great artists has been going on for centuries, but this takes it to a whole new level.

So, should writers be worried about chatbots?

Some writers may be concerned about the potential for chatbots to replace human writers in certain roles, such as news or content generation. However, it is also possible that chatbots could be used to enhance the work of human writers, by providing assistance with research, editing, or other tasks.

Well, that’s what ChatGPT told me anyway. Yes, that last paragraph was bot-generated after I posed the question on the ChatGPT website.

So I decided to ask the bot the age old question.

Was it “what is the meaning of life?” No.

Instead I asked “How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?”

There was a long pause. Did ChatGPT recognize a tongue-twister?

Then came the answer: “According to a study by wildlife biologist Richard Thomas, a woodchuck, also known as a groundhog, would chuck approximately 700 pounds of wood if a woodchuck could chuck wood. However, in reality, woodchucks do not chuck wood as they primarily burrow in soil and do not have the physical ability to chuck wood.”

Smart a$$.

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A Naden Band Christmas

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Without wanting to sound like a Grinch, November is just too early for Christmas music for me.

I mean, COME ON. Two months of nothing but Christmas music?? It’s on the radio, in the stores, at the mall, on my husband’s car playlist. It’s omnipotent.

And it drives me nuts.

Not only that, but every artist and her uncle has to release their version of every single Christmas song ever penned.

Why? Because Yuletide music is a big money maker. Just like all of the Christmas merchandise showing up on Costco shelves in early October.

Okay, so I AM a bit grinchy.

But now that I’ve got that off my chest, there is one Christmas music tradition that never disappoints. And it’s usually in the appropriate month of December too.

It’s the annual Naden Band Christmas concert, which has been a tradition in Victoria for more than 40 years. Even when COVID was cramping our style, the Naden Band streamed their concert so we wouldn’t have to miss it.

We often think of the Naden Band as part of our local parades, but they have performed all over the world for many different events, along with their more traditional performances.

Only days before we attended this year’s concert, the Naden Band had been at Canadian Forces Base Esquimalt to welcome back two navy ships, HMCS Vancouver and Winnipeg, as hundreds of sailors returned from months of deployment in the Indo-Pacific region.

The Naden Christmas concert was in conjunction with the Salvation Army’s holiday toy drive. The ticket price was very reasonable (are you paying attention Taylor Swift?), and each audience member was encouraged to bring one unwrapped toy.

The theme of this year’s concert intrigued me. It was “Hygge”.

Most of you have at least heard of hygge over the last few years, but for those of you who haven’t, let me exercise my Scandinavian heritage.

Hygge, which originated in Norway but was made popular in Denmark, is all about getting cozy and finding comfort. It might be found in a hot toddy by the fire, or curling up with a good book. It has a similar origin as the word “hug”. Whatever brings you contentment, that’s hygge.

Mostly, I was curious as to how the Naden concert people would pronounce it. Scandinavian languages have a sound all their own and the word hygge is no exception. Online you’ll see it described “hoo-ga”, but that’s not really it.

No, it’s more like a hacking sound from deep in the throat, followed by “gi” as in the word give. Okay, that doesn’t sound very cozy-like, does it?

So we’ll move on.

This year’s musical evening was fabulous, as usual. The Naden Band performed everything from traditional Christmas songs like I Saw Three Ships and Joy To The World, to less traditional ones like Fairytale of New York.

Among my favourites were songs from A Charlie Brown Christmas (Linus and Lucy gets me every time) and I’m Dreaming of Home, which featured the Pipes And Drums of the Canadian Scottish Regiment. There’s nothing quite like the sound of the pipes, is there?

The Royal Canadian Navy’s Naden Band, if you don’t already know, is a group of amazing, top notch musicians. Whenever a musical piece calls for a solo performance, you really get to hear how talented they are. And playing music is a full time position for 34 military musicians, so they practice A LOT.

Another highlight of the evening was when an audience member was chosen to conduct the band for the song Sleigh Ride. During the intermission, anyone who was interested could add their name to the draw.

A few minutes into the second half, a name was picked out of the box. It was a magical moment for all of us. The name drawn was one of the sailors who had returned from deployment only days before. It was something right out of a Hallmark movie script.

If you have never attended the Naden Band’s Christmas concert, I highly recommend it. There are usually several performance dates to choose from, including a matinee show.

And now I want you to mark this day and time on your calendars: December 26, 12:01am. That’s when the Christmas music ends, okay??