This dad took his son to Mongolia just to get him off his phone

How do you get a teen to put down their phone and talk to you? Jamie Clarke went all the way to Mongolia to find out.

Riding through a remote valley in Mongolia on the back of his motorbike, adventurer Jamie Clarke let the hum of the engine and the wind echo in his mind while his thoughts wandered.

After several hours, he pulled over to shake off his helmet and take a look at the map.

This was what he loved about adventuring - the solitude, the landscape and the feeling of being in charge of your own destiny.

But when his 18-year-old son pulled up right behind him on his own motorcycle, he had a different take on the long ride they had just finished.

For him, being alone in his thoughts was novel and unsettling.

"Oh my God, that was terrible! I can't be left with my brain like that!"

But that was precisely why the two had decided to embark on this adventure together.

Mr Clarke, a lifelong skier, mountaineer and trekker, had felt like he was losing touch with his son Khobe, who was always on his phone at their home in Calgary, Alberta.

He blames himself, partly. He has a smartphone just like everyone else, and he enjoyed playing games with his son on his Blackberry when he was small.

"If there's any addiction that we have today as individuals and as a family, we (the parents) perpetuated it," Mr Clarke told the BBC. "They're cool devices, but we began to feel like they were controlling us and not vice versa."

The issue had come to a head a few years before, when Mr Clarke went with his family to a remote ski lodge for a weekend to celebrate his 50th birthday.

The area had no wi-fi and no cell reception.

"I had never before that experienced a weekend without my phone, essentially," Khobe told the BBC. "It was very weird for me."

Khobe admits that at the time he was angry that he had to go, and miserable because without Snapchat or Instagram, he had no idea what his friends back home were up to.

That got his father thinking about the role technology had come to play in his family life - and about how to fix it.

For a long time, he had dreamed of travelling across Mongolia on a bike. Now that his son was older, why not do it with him?

About a year ago, he proposed it to Khobe. It wasn't an automatic hit.

"I said no pretty quickly," Khobe says.

"But it kind of turned into this fun idea… it became such a thing of preparation that it was very exciting to go do it."

Khobe got his motorcycle licence and the two practised longer trips. While his father has climbed Everest twice, Khobe had never climbed a mountain so he had to practise that, too.

They left on 28 July, and over the course of the next month travelled more than 2,200 kilometres (1,367 miles) across Mongolia by motorbike, horse and camel.

Although the journey was certainly Instagrammable, they refrained from posting their photos online until after they returned.

Khobe says being away from his phone was a challenge.

"I think the whole time I was pretty consumed by missing my phone," he says. 

"You realise how boring everything gets. When I'm bored I can just turn on YouTube or watch Netflix. What am I going to do, look at the stars and twiddle my thumbs?"

But he also says getting to know his dad was worth it, especially the time they spent off the road in their tents or yurts just cooking and bonding.

"I was surprised that when he's away from a work environment and family that he acts maybe closer my age," he says.

Similarly, Mr Clarke was surprised to learn how mature his son was when they weren't confined to their typical father-son parenting dynamic.

"It helped me see Khobe in a new way. I saw him as a kid who kept leaving his jacket on the table, not cleaning up the dishes," he says. "And I was able to see him step up to being a young man, and I was impressed by how well he was able to perform under pressure."

You don't have to go all to the other side of the world just to bond with your children, says Caroline Knorr, the parenting editor for Common Sense Media, a non-profit organisation that educates parents about media and technology.

"Parents can establish screen-free time zones in the house all year round, but especially around vacations," she says.

She says try and do fun things during unplugged time, like play a game, go for a walk or even watch a movie.

It's easy around the holidays to find yourself reaching for your phone while you're lying around the sofa, but Ms Knorr says it's important to model the behaviour you want your children to adopt.

"The really important thing is for parents to communicate why that's valuable. Why it's a family value to have unconnected, unplugged time as human beings," she says.

"Say explicitly 'I'm turning off my phone so we can have family time'."

Ms Knorr says it's also important to not demonise technology, or your children for using it.

"I think a lot of time parents become really worried that 'it's the media that's changing my kids' behaviour'," she says.

"But really what is leading that behaviour is a natural normal part of development where kids are becoming interested in pop culture and not as interested in family time."

Khobe says "tent life" was his favourite part of the trip

This natural part of teenagehood is compounded by social apps like Tik Tok and Snapchat, however, which are designed to keep users on for as long as possible in order to make money from advertising.

"It's a double whammy," Ms Knorr says.

Mr Clarke says now that their trip is over, he and his son are trying to apply some of the lessons they learned to their everyday life.

"I've got to realise that technology is valuable and use it, and he's realising how consuming it is. And maybe both of us need to remind ourselves who's in control - you or the app," he says.

Khobe says he's trying to make technology something he "wants to do, not has to do".

"When you're in a group of people and you're supposed to have social interaction time, but everyone's on their phone, that's when I've tried to change my habits," he says.

"It's rude to not give people your undivided attention."

(Source: BBC)

‘Horns’ are growing on young people’s skulls. Phone use is to blame, research suggests

Mobile technology has transformed the way we live — how we read, work, communicate, shop and date.

But we already know this.

What we have not yet grasped is the way the tiny machines in front of us are remolding our skeletons, possibly altering not just the behaviors we exhibit but the bodies we inhabit.

New research in biomechanics suggests that young people are developing hornlike spikes at the back of their skulls — bone spurs caused by the forward tilt of the head, which shifts weight from the spine to the muscles at the back of the head, causing bone growth in the connecting tendons and ligaments. The weight transfer that causes the buildup can be compared to the way the skin thickens into a callus as a response to pressure or abrasion.

The result is a hook or hornlike feature jutting out from the skull, just above the neck.

In academic papers, a pair of researchers at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia, argues that the prevalence of the bone growth in younger adults points to shifting body posture brought about by the use of modern technology. They say smartphones and other handheld devices are contorting the human form, requiring users to bend their heads forward to make sense of what’s happening on the miniature screens.

The researchers said their discovery marks the first documentation of a physiological or skeletal adaptation to the penetration of advanced technology into everyday life.

Michael Nitabach, a professor of physiology, genetics and neuroscience at Yale University, was unconvinced by the findings.

“Without knowing about the cell phone use of any of the people whose head X-rays were analyzed, it is impossible to draw conclusions about correlation between cell phone use and skull morphology,” he said.

Health experts warn of “text neck,” and doctors have begun treating “texting thumb,” which is not a clearly defined condition but bears resemblance to carpal tunnel syndrome. But prior research has not linked phone use to bone-deep changes in the body.

“An important question is what the future holds for the young adult populations in our study, when development of a degenerative process is evident in such an early stage of their lives?” ask the authors in one paper, published in Nature Research’s peer-reviewed, open-access Scientific Reports. The study came out last year but has received fresh attention following the publication last week of a BBC story that considers, “How modern life is transforming the human skeleton.”

Since then, the unusual formations have captured the attention of Australian media, and have variously been dubbed “head horns” or “phone bones” or “spikes” or “weird bumps.”

Each is a fitting description, said David Shahar, the paper’s first author, a chiropractor who recently completed a PhD in biomechanics at Sunshine Coast.

“That is up to anyone’s imagination,” he told The Washington Post. “You may say it looks like a bird’s beak, a horn, a hook.”

However it is designated, Shahar said, the formation is a sign of a serious deformity in posture that can cause chronic headaches and pain in the upper back and neck.

Part of what was striking about the findings, he said, was the size of the bone spurs, which are thought to be large if they measure 3 or 5 millimeters in length. An outgrowth was only factored into their research if it measured 10 millimeters, or about two-fifths of an inch.

The danger is not the head horn itself, said Mark Sayers, an associate professor of biomechanics at Sunshine Coast who served as Shahar’s supervisor and co-author. Rather, the formation is a “portent of something nasty going on elsewhere, a sign that the head and neck are not in the proper configuration,” he told The Post.

Their work began about three years ago with a pile of neck X-rays taken in Queensland. The images captured part of the skull, including the area where the bony projections, called enthesophytes, form at the back of the head.

Contrary to conventional understanding of the hornlike structures, which have been thought to crop up rarely and mainly among older people suffering from prolonged strain, Shahar noticed that they appeared prominently on X-rays of younger subjects, including those who were showing no obvious symptoms.

The pair’s first paper, published in the Journal of Anatomy in 2016, enlisted a sample of 218 X-rays, of subjects ages 18 to 30, to suggest that the bone growth could be observed in 41 percent of young adults, much more than previously thought. The feature was more prevalent among men than among women.

The effect — known as enlarged external occipital protuberance — used to be so uncommon, Sayers said, that one of its early observers, toward the end of the 19th century, objected to its title, arguing that there was no real protrusion.

That’s no longer the case.

Another paper, published in Clinical Biomechanics in the spring of 2018, used a case study involving four teenagers to argue that the head horns were not caused by genetic factors or inflammation, pointing instead to the mechanical load on muscles in the skull and neck.

And the Scientific Reports paper, published the month before, zoomed out to consider a sample of 1,200 X-rays of subjects in Queensland, ages 18 to 86. The researchers found that the size of the bone growth, present in 33 percent of the population, actually decreased with age. That discovery was in stark contrast to existing scientific understanding, which had long held that the slow, degenerative process occurred with aging.

They found instead that the bone spurs were larger and more common among young people. To understand what was driving the effect, they looked to recent developments — circumstances over the past 10 or 20 years altering how young people hold their bodies.

“These formations take a long time to develop, so that means that those individuals who suffer from them probably have been stressing that area since early childhood,” Shahar explained.

The sort of strain required for bone to infiltrate the tendon pointed him to handheld devices that bring the head forward and down, requiring the use of muscles at the back of the skull to prevent the head from falling to the chest. “What happens with technology?” he said. “People are more sedentary; they put their head forward, to look at their devices. That requires an adaptive process to spread the load.”

That the bone growth develops over a long period of time suggests that sustained improvement in posture can stop it short and even ward off its associated effects, the authors said.

Sayers said the answer is not necessarily swearing off technology. At least, there are less drastic interventions.

“What we need are coping mechanisms that reflect how important technology has become in our lives,” he said.

Shahar is pressing people to become as regimented about posture as they became about dental hygiene in the 1970s, when personal care came to involve brushing and flossing every day. Schools should teach simple posture strategies, he said. Everyone who uses technology during the day should get used to recalibrating their posture at night.

As motivation, he suggested reaching a hand around to the lower rear of the skull. Those who have the hornlike feature can probably feel it.

(Source: WP)

Eco-activists solve 30-year mystery of Garfield phones washing up on French beach

Cartoon cat becomes mascot for campaign to prevent ocean pollution

For more than 30 years, pieces of Garfield telephones kept washing ashore on the beaches of northwestern France, and no one quite knew why. Where was the lasagne-loving cartoon cat coming from?

The mystery would puzzle the locals for years. His plastic body parts, first appearing in a crevice of the Brittany coast in the mid-1980s, kept returning no matter how many times beach cleaners recovered them. Sometimes they would find only his lazy bulging eyes, or just his smug face, or his entire fat-cat body, always splayed out in the sand in a very Garfield fashion.

From the stray curly wires and the occasional dial pad, it was clear that the pieces came from the once-popular Garfield telephone, made by Tyco in the early 1980s, several years after Jim Davis first coloured the famously lazy cat into his hit comic strip.

The phone parts were in remarkable condition, considering they had been belched from the ocean, Claire Simonin-Le Meur, president of the environmental group Ar Viltansoù, told The Washington Post. Even Garfield's black stripes were still painted onto his back, where the phone hooked.

She had been searching for the origin of Garfield for years, she said, out of concern for the damage the plastic phones may be doing to the ocean – and this month, after a chance encounter on the beach, she was about to get some answers.

Ms Simonin-Le Meur said the common belief among locals was that the phones came from a wayward shipping container that must have sunk to the bottom of the ocean, leaving environmentalists to fear Garfield's plastic toxicity would continue to pollute the ocean indefinitely. In 2018 alone, at least 200 pieces of Garfield had been found on beaches in northwestern France, Franceinfo reported.

The Garfield phones were once-popular in the early 1980s and started appearing on the beach
more than 30 years ago ( AFP/Getty Images )

If they could just salvage the long-lost shipping container, Ms Simonin-Le Meur said, perhaps Garfield would stop coming.

"We were looking for it, but we had no precise idea of where it could be," Ms Simonin-Le Meur said. "We thought it was under the sea. We asked people who were divers to look for it. We get a lot of submarines in the area too – it's a military area. But they said it was not possible the container could be there and nobody saw it."

This year, however, something changed. Ms Simonin-Le Meur got a tip.

It came from a local farmer named René Morvan.

All of Franceinfo's recent publicity of the bizarre phenomenon and its environmental impact had apparently sparked his memory. One day last month, Ms Simonin-Le Meur said she met Mr Morvan on the beach while cleaning up debris – including a Garfield part.

"Are you looking for Garfield?" the man asked.

Ms Simonin-Le Meur said yes, she was – she always was.

"Come with me," the man told her. "I can show you."

Mr Morvan started from the beginning. Back when he was 19 or 20 years old in the mid-1980s, he told her, a storm blew through the area – and before residents knew it, Garfield telephones were scattered all over the beach, just as Ms Simonin-Le Meur had always been told. He and his brother were curious, Mr Morvan said, and they decided to go exploring, touring the rocky coastline until they found what they were seeking.

Wedged inside a cave, tucked into the seaside cliffs, there it was: a metal shipping container – and a cache of Garfield telephones, Mr Morvan claimed he saw.

The story struck Ms Simonin-Le Meur as too good to be true. The tide was too high to bring her to the cave that day, Mr Morvan realised, and so she would have to wait to find out if he was telling the truth. The shipping container, Mr Morvan told her, was lodged so deep in the cave that it was nearly submerged, making the trip a dangerous expedition.

But finally, last week, it was safe. The tide was low. And Mr Morvan, Ms Simonin-Le Meur said, ultimately was not kidding.

Filming the discovery, a group of journalists and environmentalists, Ms Simonin-Le Meur included, climbed up the rocky shore to the cave's narrow opening, finding snippets of a bright orange phone cord along the way. Garfield was scattered all about, just like on the beach.

But when the group entered the cave, ready for the big reveal, they did not find what they expected. It was clear the plastic cats had been there, Ms Simonin-Le Meur said, but clearer still that most were already gone.

"Our preoccupation was to understand why we had so many Garfields everywhere. We thought it would be helpful to find the container so we can stop it. But that was unfortunately not the case," Ms Simonin-Le Meur said. "What we found was the remainder of the shipping container. And it was empty."

It seemed the group had solved the mystery, she said, but not the problem.

The "Téléphone Garfield," as it is known in an online catalogue for ubiquitous ocean debris, is just one plastic item among countless others that litter the ocean and the shore every year. In the region of northwestern France, the Garfield phone has become like an unwitting Smokey Bear, the mascot for the importance of ocean clean-up and the dangers of microplastics polluting the ocean. Lionel Lucas, who developed the online Ocean Plastic Tracker that catalogues discoveries of Garfield, told Franceinfo the Garfield phone was a "symbol" for the movement.

"It is no longer garbage but evidence," Mr Lucas said.

Ms Simonin-Le Meur said she has tried to use Garfield particularly as a way to interest children in ocean pollution, given its allure compared to pieces of plastic trash. And while the recent purported discovery of Garfield's origins has drawn renewed interest, Ms Simonin-Le Meur said, the discovery did not change much in her eyes.

"We found plastic last Friday and Saturday and Sunday, and we have found a lot of pieces of Garfield," she said. "Things are just exactly the same."

(Source: Independent)

Am I a bad parent if I'm on my phone in front of my kids?

I often feel guilty that I spend too much time on my phone when I'm with my kids, and I feel that there is a lot of "shaming" of moms for this in the media and elsewhere. But is it really that harmful for them?

My kids get way more attention from me than I ever got from my own parents. My mom was loving and kind, and I never felt neglected, but she almost never played with me and was usually distracted by cooking/cleaning/watching television, etc. She also spent a lot of time on the phone, chatting to friends for hours while I did my own thing.

I play with my kids at least an hour every day, read to them, do art projects with them, take them places and so on. But I often check my email or the news or Facebook or whatever on my phone when I'm with them or at the park -- mainly because child care is exhausting and I need a break. Is this really so bad?

Signed,
Need My Screen Time

Dear Need My Screen Time,
You may be familiar with the many ways cell phones can disrupt family life. It's "contaminated time," they call it, when our kids need us but we aren't really present. The phrase conveys that the purity of the parent-child bond has been compromised. But the degree of the toxicity, and the threat it poses, remain an agita-producing mystery.

You're probably also familiar with the other pervasive critique of contemporary parents, which is that we're overdoing it. They call us helicopters, lawnmowers -- I predict "wheelbarrows" is coming next to describe parents who direct their children's every move -- and tell us to take two steps away from our children lest we stifle them.

So the options seem to be either contaminate or stifle. And we wonder why parents today are so anxious. Somewhere in between these two options must exist a state in which a child feels neither neglected nor overwhelmed. And in that state, I'd like to believe, a parent can occasionally space out with the help of their phone.

The fact that you sent me a question signifies that you are the kind of parent who cares enough to seek out advice about a potential problem. And that means, I suspect, that your kids are doing just fine.

It's you I'm worried about. Instead of looking at how your phone time affects your kids, I want to consider how it is affecting you. How does that tiny and yet infinite computer in your pocket affect your experience of parenting?

You deserve a break sometimes. That's a given. It's using the cell phone for the break that makes it tricky.

Let's return to your non-helicopter mom for a minute. Her landline was like a calm lake, in which a single ripple could be easily observed. Call. Chat. Hang up. The cell phone, by contrast, is a wide-open sea in which there are many directions one could travel and impassible tides, pings and texts and news alerts, that have a whole other set of destinations in mind.

The potential and efficiency of cell phones can be a godsend for parents. We can take care of a problem at work, order groceries, read the news and comment on a friend's baby pictures, all while our children play at the park or throw Legos around the living room. But the cell phone's neverending-ness, and the attendant addictiveness, can also easily raise our anxiety.

Questions to ask yourself: Is it easy to put down the phone? Do you feel satisfied when you do? Or does a phone session tend to flood you with thoughts about everything else you should be doing (besides parenting) and everything else everyone else is doing (besides parenting)? What is the transition from phone back to parenting like?

Because few of us want to -- or can -- totally disconnect from the digital realm while parenting, I am not going to contemplate the idea of going cold turkey. Instead, let's look at how to use cell phones in a way that minimizes potential damage to parent and child. We'll skip the obvious rules, like no cell phone use while driving or comforting a sobbing child, and jump right to issues you might have overlooked.

Catherine Steiner-Adair, clinical psychologist, school consultant and co-author of "The Big Disconnect: Protecting Childhood and Family Relationships in the Digital Age," told me that, based on her research, children are particularly sensitive to parental cell phone use in moments of transition during the day.

School dropoff, school pickup or any other time you are saying hello or goodbye are when children most want their parents' undivided attention. This means no work calls on the way to school, either. "These moments are emotionally pivotal for children and more loaded than other moments," she said.

Steiner-Adair has no problem with parents being on their cell phones in the presence of their children or while the children are playing by themselves or with another. But she does want the parent to make it clear to the children that they are still available, even if they are on their cell phone. If, or when, a child requests your attention, put down the phone.

What if you're in the middle of fixing a work problem and your child isn't in a state of distress? Steiner-Adair says it's fine to wrap it up, as long as you explain to your kid that you need a few more minutes.

And then really take only a few more minutes. Cell phones mess with our sense of time and can even cause our hearing to fade, which makes us less aware of our surroundings. They're also stimulants that tend to rev us up, which can make it difficult to adjust back to the plodding pace of parenting young children. "Just having your phone on your body, even if it is turned off, is distracting and causes anxiety," Steiner-Adair said, adding that phoneless parenting is often happier parenting.

Maryam Abdullah, a developmental psychologist and parenting program director at the Greater Good Science Center, said that being "intentional" with phone use can help ease some of the anxiety they create in parents. She recommends that you commit to some rough schedule of when you will and won't look at your phone. "This way, you are reaffirming to yourself that you have permission to use it during certain times, when you know that it isn't going to be a problem." These limits don't only help you avoid being on the phone during less-than-ideal moments, they also help you feel in control when you are.

So, where to draw the line? There's no universal prescription. I suggest paying close attention to your moods, your needs, your daily rhythms, and you will probably get a good sense of it. Would you be a better parent if you put your cell phone down more, less distracted by the internal and external noise digital life tends to generate? Or would you be a worse one, lonely and isolated? Where might the sweet spot exist for you?

Take all that energy you are wasting feeling guilty about cell phone use and put it toward trying to answer these questions. Your whole family will benefit from the clarity of mind and sense of peace that will come from figuring this out.

(Source: CNN)

That one phone call

When the phone rings, it could mean many things for a journalist. At best, a story; at worst, a PR pitch. But sometimes, it’s also the beginning of a lifelong relationship.

In May 2013, on the day the Class XII State Board examination results were announced, a doctor friend called asking if the newspaper would be interested in a story about a young girl with cancer who had scored high marks. She felt if someone wrote about the girl, people would be moved to contribute to help with her treatment, as her family could not afford it. At that point, the story was only lukewarm interesting, and the girl’s score was not that high at 81%. I decided to call anyway.

Lakshmi Priya was a revelation. She had heard of her result when she was undergoing chemotherapy, and she asked if it was okay if could we just speak over the phone. She had been diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia and could not go to school. Her father Velu interjected with the mild, respectful tone I’ve come to associate with him since: “But she was studying all the time she was in hospital. Even when we would ask her to rest, she’d refuse.”

A Dalit, Velu had struggled to give his daughters Lakshmi Priya and Lavanya the education he had a mere introduction to. The diagnosis came like a bolt from the blue for the family which was trying to keep it together with Velu’s monthly salary of ₹14,000. Gradually funds poured in and the transplantation took place. Velu called from time to time, to share information about her small milestones, the doctor’s remarks, his joy, and to seek reassurance: “All will be well, no Madam? She is everything to me.”

Lakshmi Priya died on August 26, 2013. I knew because Velu called, his voice heavy with tears. He called again later to say there were funds remaining in her account and that he was writing a cheque for a girl with cancer. He’d call every now and then: when Lavanya cleared her Class X examination with flying colours, his wife Sumathi’s sorrow, on Lakshmi Priya’s birthdays, even when he said he could not take it any more. I would listen and sometimes say things that could not matter much. Over one conversation, he said he had saved money for Lavanya’s higher studies, but if she got through admission on merit, he was willing to give that money to some other deserving student or patient. Could I recommend someone?

Lavanya is writing her final school exam and I’m expecting a call from Velu any time saying the same thing he always does: “Madam, are you fine? So happy you picked my call.” No Sir, I’m so glad you called.

(Source: The Hindu)

Phone booth in Japan where people can call the dead

In 2011, an earthquake and tsunami tore through Japan. Almost 16,000 people died during the natural disaster and many communities across the country still have not recovered.

But one coastal Japanese town is dealing with its grief in a unique way—a white telephone booth with glass panels. The phone booth, which only has a disconnected rotary phone inside, has become a popular destination for residents who are still dealing with grief. It sits atop a grassy hill in Otsuchi, overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

Otsuchi is a town that was decimated in the disaster. The entire area caved in within 30 minutes and 10 percent of the town’s population was killed.

But one year before the disaster, Itaru Sasaki installed the phone booth in his garden to help himself move past the death of his cousin. “Because my thoughts couldn’t be relayed over a regular phone line,” Sasaki told This American Life in September. “I wanted them to be carried on the wind.”

The booth has since become the “wind phone” and has become a sort of pilgrimage for those dealing with the death of a loved one. In the three years after the disaster, the booth received over 10,000 visitors, according to local reports.

Some come to make one special phone call. Others are regular visitors who dial up deceased loved ones and fill them in.

In the years since it became a pilgrimage point, the wind phone has been the center of both a TV documentary and a NPR special report.

For those who wish to visit, Otsuchi is accessible from Tokyo by either high-speed rail or a seven-hour car ride. The phone booth is located on a hill just outside of the city.

(Source: Travel+Leisure)

Don't suffer in silence...

... and I mean it!

My door is always open, should anyone ever need a chat, completely non judgmental, you are always welcome here, please never suffer in silence.

I have juice in the fridge, tea or coffee ready at a moment's notice and I will always be here for you to talk on the phone if that's what makes you feel comfortable ...

You are always welcomed, you will never disturb me.

I am trying to demonstrate that someone is always listening.

#SuicideAwareness ❤ #YouAreNotAlone #LetUsTalk

Why do these text-holes annoy us?

Do you know what I really miss in Doha? Travelling in bus and falling asleep. When I was in Bangalore, I travelled in bus every weekend. During those journeys, often I used to wake up from my nap to a loud talk. I used to open my eyes and see a woman or a man in the next seat conversing loudly on her or his cellphone. They used to be so busy with their conversation, to put it politely, without bothering what other travellers would think about it.

During one such journeys, I had come across a woman who was loudly abusing the person on the other side and passengers were enjoying her conversation. What I could make it out from her shouts was that she had given credit to a person for interest and the man was not prompt enough to pay the interest. Unfortunately (even for us, as we had to hear her abusive language), the person had picked her call and she was literally screaming at him to pay the interest soon. She told him that she herself would go to his house to collect the money and warned him sternly to face the consequences if he fails to pay the interest.

It was not the first time that conversations over mobile phones had irritated me. It might not be just me, even others might have also been irritated like me. I wonder why and how people disturb others in public places, thanks to their cellphones.

When I told about this to one of my friends, he said that the urban slang dictionary has come up with a term called ‘text-hole’ for such people. A text-hole refers to a person who’s on his/her cellphone at inappropriate places.

It really irritates me when people use their cellphones during meetings which unnecessarily get prolonged. I get annoyed seeing people talking loudly on their mobile phones even in hospitals. And nothing could be more annoying when a person attends cellphone in the cinema hall.

I had seen some of my colleagues taking their cellphones even to washroom and talking there. What’s there so much to talk in the public creating so much nuisance? To the extent of taking the conversation even to the restroom?!

Still I remember the days, when I was dating my hubby. He used to take me out for lunch or dinner and half the time, he used to be on his cellphone. He used to continuously get calls regarding shoots and I was worried about the situation. He had to promise me that his calls would not disturb us after the wedding and literally, it didn’t work. He used to get calls even at 2.30-3 am. So he had to make up his mind and take a break from his job within 3-4 months of our marriage.

And another fun is to see how people walking on the road talk using earphones or Bluetooth and looks as if they are talking to themselves. The scene is no different in Doha and I see many using their phone even while driving. A lot of men and women keep themselves busy texting and sometimes talking over their mobile phones while driving and it is surprising how they reach their destinations safely!

Whenever I see anybody disturbing people in public, I feel like screaming, but can’t do it. Hope, one day they understand and stop annoying others, I know that would be a daydream!

Why do these text

Canadian man uses iPad to enter the US

When I saw a joke on Facebook, I laughed at it, but now, somehow I’m surprised at the way the technology is moving and the people are utilizing it. A Canadian who realized he forgot his passport as he approached the US border found a new way to gain entry, through his iPad. Yes, not a joke. iPad helped him to cross the border.

I read a report which said that a Canadian, Martin Reisch, said that a slightly annoyed US border officer let him cross into the United States from Quebec after he presented a scanned copy of his passport on his Apple iPad. Reisch was just a half an hour from the border when he decided to try to gain entry rather than turn back and make a two-hour trek back home to Montreal to fetch his passport.

He told the officer that he was heading to the US to drop off Christmas gifts for his friend's kids. The officer seemed mildly annoyed when he handed him the iPad. "I thought I'd at least give it a try," Reisch said. "He took the iPad into the little border hut. He was in there a good five, six minutes. It seemed like an eternity. When he came back he took a good long pause before wishing me a Merry Christmas."

Reisch said the officer made an exception.

Canadians began needing more than a driver's licence for identification for US land border crossings in 2009. US Customs and Border Protection says it only accepts a passport, an enhanced driver's licence or a Nexus pass from Canadian citizens entering at land crossings. The list doesn't mention facsimiles, like scans and photocopies.

A spokesman for the department did not immediately respond to questions on whether scanned passports are also commonly accepted at US points of entry.

Reisch, 33, said he took a scanned photo of his passport years ago in case it was over lost or stolen while traveling. He said he also successfully used the passport on his iPad to get through Canadian Customs on the way home later that day.

He said he doubts he'd get away with it again and will bring his passport next time. But he hopes border officials will eventually make digital identification an official form of travel document. He noted that many airlines now accept digital boarding passes stored on smartphones.

"I see the future as 100 per cent being able to cross with your identity on a digital device -- it's just a matter of time," he said.