Musings from a confused Ipad

It's a cool looking device with an identity crisis like a lot of ABCDs (Apple Built Confused Devices). This is what its thinking:

• 'Am I iphone's big brother?' - no, sorry you are not a phone.
• 'Am I a macbook's younger brother?' - no, sorry - you don't have basic multi-tasking capabilities (well you do but your father Steve decided to hide that from you). So no listening to Pandora while surfing the web or chatting with friends. Cant really be a computer with single tasking capabilities.
• 'Am I going to become the surfing device of choice?' - no, you don't support flash which is used in some way by almost all websites.
• 'Am I going to replace the Kindle for serious reading?' - no, your battery life and color screen will make it impossible to read entire books; plus you are too big to be truly portable.
• 'Can I at least be used a photo viewer?' - sure but only as long as you don't try to transfer pictures directly from your camera's sd/micro sd card as you don't have a sd card slot. Of course, you can spend the extra money to get an accessory to give you a capability that was there in my $150 Nokia from 4 years ago.
• 'I can definitely replace iphone/bberry for emails' - This is a great way to sell more ipads. Encourage people to type emails while on the go on a device as big as this, and you will surely have people dropping it and then running to replace it. I will use my computer to send emails when I am home or the email is long. Or I will use my phone to send emails when I am on the go or the email is short.
• 'Can I become the management centre for people's digital files - cant. no usb/flash slots.
• 'Can I be a tablet pc for business users?' - you are losing it man - for any business user to take you seriously you need a way to input handwriting and the abilitiy to transfer files through usb ports (non-existent)
• 'Netbook killer then?' - seriously? my $300 netbook can multi task, has usb/sd slots, weighs about as much as you do but has the same battery life.
• 'I do have a cool map app' - well yeah, but do you see yourself being used in a car to find your way home. or do you see yourself being carried in my pocket when I am on my way to a party but dont know my way to the club from the subway station. or to be at hand when I want to find the nearest thai restaurant.

SO WHAT CAN I DO?

Well, you are to be used by iphone lovers who love their apps enough to want to use the same on a bigger screen. But not on the go as you are too big. You are also to be used as a browsing device by undemanding surfers who are happy to do one thing and one thing only while they surf. May be fun to read the daily NYT but at my speed, I may run out of batteries before getting to the obituary section. But most of all, you will be used as a show-off tool. No different than the the latest pair of limited release Nike kicks signed by the most popular athlete of the day. Its a dirty job. But someone has to do it.

From V.

If I didn't have you

Hat-tip to HoopyFrood for pointing me to Tim Minchin. Here is a song about the statistical probability of finding someone to love. Hilarious! Should provide inspiration to all you single players.

Fooding

Much of our time in London has been spent exploring food choices. I have tried a range of grocery stores and must say that, on the whole, the quality of groceries is impressive. I'm not just talking about high-end stores like Waitrose, even regular grocery chains and neighborhood stores carry great products.

The other day I used juicy, vine tomatoes in my pasta sauce, and they made all the difference. Today at a farmer's market across our flat, I found four varieties of potatoes that I had never seen before.

If I were keeping score between New York and London - 1 point to London.

Week One

It's been one week since we arrived in London - so far so good. I must admit, it has been hard to escape the tourist mindset resulting in us doing things that we would normally do on a holiday. The fact that we are here to stay (for the next three years) hasn't sunk in as yet. Perhaps it will when we move into a permanent residence.

London welcomed us with the worst weather it had experienced in 30 odd years. It has snowed everyday, and while it is still warmer than New York, it is definitely not what we were hoping for. Couple the weather with our Newark airport debacle and maybe these are signs trying to tell us something...

I'm optimistic though. People tell us that this is the coldest it gets. If that's true, it's not bad at all.


Disclaimer: For the next couple of months or so, this blog is mostly going to focus on our settling-in escapades in London. I hope that you find them interesting.

Goodbye

Like most people I don't like goodbyes, especially drawn-out ones. Luckily our US goodbyes were relatively painless as we had enough time to say farewell to everyone we wanted to. And I'm reading Stephen Colbert's I am America (and So Can You!) to help me get through this transition. Like everything Colbert, it's hilarious!

The only painful part of our departure was the six hour delay at Newark airport because of a security breach. Apparently some bloke intentionally or unintentionally entered a secure zone without an ID check. Since they couldn't find him they had to rescreen everyone at the airport. We had to deplane, go out of the terminal, and then go through the security check along with thousands of other passengers. The entire process took about four hours, resulting in our flight being delayed by six hours.

It could have been much worse. At first we were sure that our flight would be canceled. Instead, once rescreening began, things proceeded relatively quickly. While thousands of passengers were packed in a small area, most waited patiently, and Continental called in reinforcements to get stranded passengers onto alternate flights. Of course the fact that authorities felt like they had to respond to the breach in this way is another matter altogether. To me the episode highlighted what I most liked and disliked about living in the US.