A Typical Sunday Night in Thailand (Technoland)

A Typical Sunday Night in Thailand (Technoland)

I am going to speculate that a typical family Sunday evening like we experienced last night is a lot different from when I was a child. I recall my Mom, Dad and I sitting together in the living room listening to the Lux Radio Theatre (there was no TV). Mom was crocheting a doily, Dad was thumbing through yesterday’s Calgary Herald, and I was colouring with my massive set of 12 new wax crayons. Could life get any better?

This past Sunday evening, in Bangkok with Wayne, Kelly, Sawyer, Helen, and Darlene, unfolded a little differently. Wayne was extolling the virtues of the GPS on his iPhone that he had shown to a cab driver to find a local address with unpronounceable Thai street names. At the same time, he was printing off the boarding passes for our next flight, which he had personally booked online the previous week. The rest of his evening he busied himself marking student homework submissions from kids in Alberta, 8000 miles away, who were taking some classes online with him. 

Kelly was curled up with an iBook that she had downloaded to her iPad for free and was content as a kitten. Her revery was disturbed when her computer rang to inform her that she was receiving a phone call on Skype or FaceTime. It was her girlfriend, Sarah, calling from L.A. so Kelly snuck into a quiet room to chat for an hour with her friend back home in the US. And best of all, free of charge!

Darlene was busy chronicling our Thailand adventure writing another blog and wirelessly sending some photos from her iPhone to her blog page to help illustrate the story. She finished and then sent a number of personal emails to friends in Canada, the US, Ireland and Turkey. Simultaneously, Darlene was listening on her headphones to the latest Adele album that she had downloaded from iTunes to her iPod. Boundaries in our Internet world are non existent.

I was multi tasking. For someone who is often not motivated to single task, that is an accomplishment. I was designing a photo album on my computer, to try to tell our Thai story in pictures. The Lulu site I use allows me to both create picture albums as well as self publish books. I have currently self published seven books and am working on number eight, which will incorporate some of my Padyourthai blog. 

Helen, our eight year old grand daughter was playing the Mindcraft computer game on her iPad, but soon became a little bored. She went to her room and hauled out her two robots, Dash and Dot, and started to program them to chase around the living room from the controls on her iPad. No playing with Barbies and doll houses for my grand daughter!

Sawyer, our ten year old grandguy, was also working on his computer, downloading the video from his GoPro that he had shot while we were on holidays. The GoPro straps to your forehead and captures all the action as your own eyes would see it. He then had to work on editing the video, create a voice over and see if he could post it on YouTube.

Finally, in order to include some quality family time in our Sunday evening, we all sat down to watch a Netflix movie using our Canadian membership, in Thailand.

I am also going to speculate that there is little use me buying a colouring book and set of wax crayons to demonstrate the joys of my youth to this modern high tech family. Welcome to Technoland, 2016!