That syncing feeling

Syncing has been on my mind a lot just lately. Mainly because I just can't get my damned iPhone to sync with my damned work PC. Technology is amazing except when it fucks up and leaves you bemused, confused and downright frustrated. One thing I've learnt though is that one way or another it will get resolved and life will go on.

But that's only one sort of syncing I've been pondering. Human syncing... now that's a much harder thing to achieve. Have you ever considered how difficult it is for any of us to connect, both in the bigger, deeper sense of the word but also just in the day to day to way?

I am sometimes awe struck by how it is that we meet the people who will become our significant others and also our precious friends; how those connections are made is a concept that never ceases to amaze.

Fate. I guess that's what human syncing is. The alignment of the planets so that two people can meet and not just pass each other by in the fast moving stream of our busy lives but acknowledge each other, connect, see their commonalities and develop a desire to explore who that other person is. It's a chemical reaction that is magical and intangible. Why this person on this day and not that person on that day?

But on a day to day basis, with the people we already know, syncing is a different sort of challenge. It's tough being on the same page at the same time. Each day we go through a myriad of different emotions and energies.

You want to talk, I don't. I want to have sex, you don't. I want to stay home at the end of a long week, you want to go out to party. Each day we compromise, we make a supreme effort to sync or we withdraw and push away, the effort to sync beyond us at that moment.

I'm surprised by how much significance the word "sync" has in life. It's not just about iTunes and iPhones. It's about people connecting, and after all, what else is life all about.

Loving the Kindle

I'm very happy to report that I love my Kindle. I purchased it with some amount of trepidation, wondering how on earth an electronic gadget would be able to replicate the experience of reading a book.

Well I can easily say that the experience is not deminished, at least not for me. My first book purchase was Nick Hornby's Juliet, Naked and I loved it; reading it on the Kindle didn't detract in any way from my enjoyment.

The features of the Kindle really blow my mind. Being able to search the Amazon Kindle Store by (free) wireless connection from just about anywhere and then purchase and download a book with just a few clicks and a wait of only 10 or 20 seconds is truly amazing. Then there are the features I can appreciate though I would probably rarely use. Like the text size adjustment, the text-to-speech feature available on most books, the inbuilt dictionary which allows you to pop up a definition simply by positioning your cursor next to the word in question, the ability to email PDF documents to yourself at your Kindle email account. The list goes on.

For me it's simply the ease of use and the simple elegance of always having a library in my handbag. After reading Juliet, Naked I downloaded The Remains of the Day which I have been meaning to read after loving Never Let Me Go so much. Recent Kindle Store searching has revealed bargains like the entire Jane Austen collection for $5.19. Many classics are even available for free but I haven't downloaded one yet so I'm not sure what the "catch" is.

Now I'm working my way through a stack of unread paper books and very quickly they seem bothersome to me. Big, heavy and annoying. You could say I have embraced the new technology and I'm not looking back. If you are a book lover I'd say take a look, you might surprise yourself.