Yesterday I dropped my mom off at the airport for an early morning flight to Tokyo. As we left the house, I asked if she had everything:
Two carry ons Netbook Blackberry Kindle Receipt for cell phone she’ll rent at NaritaWow. Is it possible to travel these days and not stay connected?
Since my mom is visiting friends throughout her three-week stay in Japan, she’s rented a cell phone there so her friends won’t have to dial the US every time they want to connect. Her Blackberry accepts international calls, so if I need to phone her, it’s still a local call for me. Convenient.
I traveled throughout Asia and Eastern Europe back before the dot-com boom. On those trips, I only cared about three things: a book, paper, and pen. To stay connected to the familiar, I read (in my native English) or wrote to friends and family back in the US or Hong Kong. Yes, it was one-way communication, unlike today’s e-mailing, blogging, and texting, but it kept me from feeling completely isolated.
When I spent scorching summers and frigid winters in central China (photo on left), I pined for visits to the post office to mail letters. No one in China had personal computers back then, and just having a phone in one’s home still seemed like a luxury.
So now with all this technology, I can’t imagine ever feeling lonely or cut off from my friends and family.
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