I hardly go anywhere without my iPad.
Certainly not if I’m going somewhere work-related — a meeting or an interview or whatever — because it’s easy to carry and can perform most work-related functions.
But I don’t go on vacation without it, either. And in the past, I haven’t even left the hotel or B&B without it. When we went to Thailand and Hawaii several years ago, I carried it in a drawstring bad strapped across my chest (I long ago outgrew the trying-to-look-cool thing) or back. See the embarrassing image below.
But by the time we went to Ireland and then to Boston, I’d decided if I absolutely had to do something while walking about on vacation, my phone would do. If I can keep the blasted thing charged.
Still, the iPad goes with me nearly everywhere.
And my iPhone has noticed. Lately, it’s been acting a bit sarcastic about it. Every time I leave the house now — for a walk, or to go to the grocery — I’ve started getting these notifications, like the one above, as soon as I’m a few blocks from the house.
They’re like, “Hey, you — it looks like you left your baby behind! Don’t you want to run back home and get it?”
OK, so maybe this isn’t petulance on the part of the phone. It seems to have started when I allowed the iPad to update its operating system recently. And there seems to be an easy way to turn off such notifications.
But… maybe one of these times, I really would want to go back and get it. So I’m leaving it on for now. I’ll just have to see how much it bugs me going forward…
Here I am with me mate Mark, whom I met on the road to Kanchanaburi in 2015. He’s a retired roofer from England. Note that in addition to the drawstring bag, I’m wearing my tropical-weight travel vest. So I’m really not kidding when I say I’ve outgrown trying to look cool on the road.
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I thought I’d used this picture before, but I can’t find it now, so here it is again.
Here you see my buddy Mark and I and a Buddhist monk having a high old time sitting on the back seat of a bus on the way to Kanchanaburi.
Which is of course the cool seat, where I always sat when possible when riding school buses. Because it’s fun — you bounce up and down more when you hit bumps — and because it’s as far away as you can get from the driver, and usually from any teacher riding along as a chaperone. So, hypothetically, you can get more rowdy without consequences. A kid on the back seat thinks he’s cool, like Arlo and the guys on the Group W bench.
But in Thailand, we’re sitting there because it’s physically cooler — the bus isn’t air-conditioned, and it’s probably over 100 degrees outside, and you get more breeze from the open windows — and because we’re allowed to sit there, because we’re guys.
My wife and daughter are sitting somewhere up front, because females aren’t allowed on the back seat, because monks sit there.
And look at us. We’re enjoying our privilege! Beastly, aren’t we? Not that women would want to be seen with a guy wearing that travel vest and that geeky string bag, but still… It’s the principle of the thing, isn’t it?…