Tag: cell phones

Magic in our pockets

Tonight, I have dance class (at long last).  But that is not exactly the point… merely a piece of the mix.  I am on my way to dance class now, writing this, as I listen to the lady’s voice coming through the hidden speakers on the train, announcing clearly, “Please off your seat to those who may need it,” at which I inwardly chuckle/cringe each time.

Before I left home for class, however, I was baking cake cookies, while watching a film.  The film was “Kate & Leopold”, and it was showing on a laptop near me at my convenience.  It was well past time to leave, but the film was not quite finished.  However, I had finally finished my cake cookies, and so had no real excuse to delay my departure – the film could pause and wait just as easily as it could continue playing… Perhaps even more easily, as it required no power source from my apartment to do that.  Though, that is not the point here.

So, I paused the movie, once I saw that it had a good ten minutes remaining in it, and it therefore would not finish in the time it took me to go to the bathroom and put on my socks.  Now, I know how the movie ends.  That, too, is not the point.  The point, my dear readers is this: I didn’t have to stop watching the film, despite my then immediate departure.

How crazy a world is this one in which we now live, where I don’t have to stop watching the film that is at home, when I leave my home?

I could have easily pulled up Netflix on my phone, just as easily as I checked the time when I was slumbering down the stairs outside – which was, indeed, how Inhad even had the idea – , and immediately resumed the film where I had paused it.  Just by opening the website (or app if I’d bothered to download it), I could have simply clicked the play button and continued my film as I was heading to the train station.

It seems so simple and normal and standard, because people do this all the time.  I see people watching TV shows and movies almost every time I am on the train.  And yet, having experienced this particular situation tonight, I suddenly see how bizarre and futuristic a concept this is.  A movie can travel with me in my pocket, even if ten seconds ago, it was on a huge TV screen or a computer or wherever.  It’s like shapeshifting or magic, and we’re all carrying it around with us, as though it’s a cup of coffee or a slice of bread.  Or an apple.  Literally, I guess.  (Though I’d definitely intended that one to be a reference to its connection with the magic of physics.)
Post-a-day 2017

Trains, Phones, and Social Experiments

Riding on the train tonight felt like a sort of social experiment.

In all the trains in Japan, there are signs, and even announcements, informing everyone not only to put their phones on silent mode, but to refrain from talking on the phones.  Therefore, even though almost every single person on the train is using his or her phone, people are usually using headphones, and the train is always rather quiet.  Tonight, therefore, when I heard a noise that was clearly coming from a phone, I looked up immediately.

The girl standing near me seems to be playing a video on her phone.  I wondered what the deal was, seeing as how nobody ever did such a thing, letting the sound play openly from the phone.  After a quick visual evaluation, I realized that although I knew her phone was playing the video on loudspeaker, she likely had no idea.  I watched as she turned up the volume to full blast, even, and had to refrain from laughing.  People around the train car kept looking up from their own phones, clearly wondering what on earth was going on.  (I wonder if they thought I was the one doing it at first, seeing as I was before and are on the train, and then they were surprised that it was a Japanese girl.)  Now I knew that this was kind of a huge sort of social faux pas, but what I really was excited to discover was whether anyone would actually do anything to correct this girl’s utterly unfathomable and inappropriate behavior (as it seems to be for them).

This girl, you see, was wearing headphones.  They just simply were not plugged into her phone.  After the sort of music video ended, I kept an eye on the grill and her phone screen – she was scrolling through some sort of news feed on what looked like a Japanese social media site.  I kept waiting for another video, to test my theory that she had no idea that her headphones were unplugged, and that it wasn’t intentional that she play just the one thing out loud, not caring at all what other people thought.

After a few minutes, I got my chance – a video started blaring from her phone again.  Oddly enough, it was actually the exact same video as before.  So, I’m not so sure what was up with that, but whatever… Perhaps 20 seconds into the video, as I was watching in an attempt to figure out what the video was, the guy sitting facing her right in front of her, who happened to be wearing his own headphones, quickly but casually waved his hand in her frame of view, and then quickly but gently grabbed and handed her the unplugged end of her headphones, which had apparently been just hanging down in front of her the whole time.  In a sort of fluttery panic, the girl took her headphone cord from the guy, attempted multiple times to pause her video while turning down the volume, – she did eventually succeed – and then plugged in her headphones cord to her phone.  I had a huge smile on my face for not the first time with the incident, and I found it incredibly difficult not to burst into laughter right then and there on the newly silent train.  😛
Post-a-day 2017