Techno what?

I would never go to the City alone until when I was a month old here in Australia. I was very afraid to get lost. Buses just have numbers and places which were so alien to me. A short travel seemed like thousands of miles away. I got goosebumps whenever I started to see trees and lots of trees. Where am I? How do I travel back to my place? Not once did I enter no through road (unaware of the sign), asked strangers to direct me where to go. No wonder why it took me more than a week before I could find a permanent accommodation. I was just so afraid to navigate. I was too afraid to walk far from St. Leo’s College, where I was housed temporarily. I am just so lucky to have wonderful housemates who toured me around the place. We took public transportation to go to the places that I would need often: grocery, Church, and some places where I could buy the cheapest goods like the Chinatown.

Things have changed. I am now good at the basics. I can now top up my go card (it’s the card for taking public transport just like in MRT) using the machines in the train stations, the vending machines now communicate with me, and most of all I have stopped asking what bus to take and how to get to my destination. I have gotten accustomed to using Translink—the public transportation website that gives you a comprehensive direction including how many metres you need to walk once you get off a train or a bus! That frees me from interpreting the difficult Aussie accent (although I’m also getting good at it now). I have accepted the fact that people here want to communicate with you online. Yup, at times you would ask: where are the human beings? I have gotten accustomed to living in an e-mail society. People are very quick and more efficient in responding to e-mails. I am now used to filling in my username and password not less than 10 times daily. And yes, I am now good at shopping books online! E-commerce! I’m good at it. I find it amazing that I could get out of our house and go back with lots of groceries without a centavo with me! I am now an excellent card ‘swiper’! Forgive me if I am so amazed by all these things. I should tell you that I am a technophobe.

As you have just known that I am a technophobe (sorry for repeating I am really good at incriminating myself), let me tell you that I am also now getting good at communicating with gadgets. Prior to the start of the first semester, I bought a printer. A printer! I remember back in the office, I would have second thoughts touching our printer when there’s a paper jam. I would just wait until someone smarter gets near and fix it. So there I was, not having a choice, I tried to understand the manual very well clapping every time I was able to move from one step to the next. Until voila! It worked! I was just so happy then, and noisy too! I made it work. Second is my new DSLR camera and third is my new camcorder. And I should also tell you that I made internet connection possible in our house by following all those ‘config blah blah,’. I get stressed every time I remember it. I find it amazing and sometimes amusing how I get intellectually challenged by all these technologies. I even have some eureka moments like when I discovered that my earphones for my ipod can be connected to my laptop. Because of that I can now hear my favourite songs even when I’m in the library. And hey, in some presentations that I had this semester I got good marks for effective use of visuals. And mind you, I no longer use powerpoint. I use Prezi. Hahaha!

Before I end this short piece, I should tell you that I am now getting good at giving directions to people. Like yesterday when we were on the train, two Aussies asked me: "Is Milton the next station?" (we were in Toowoong). I confidently said, “No, it’s Auchenflower. Next to that is Milton.” Ate Aileen, my coscholar here had the same experience. Unfortunately she didn’t know the location as well so she volunteered to google it using her blackberry phone. Now, that’s being techno savvy.