All Posts from the Technology Category

  • The land of bip

    February 28, 2010  |  2

    Ever noticed how so many things in the world bip at you these days?
    Now I know where it all started: the land of bip.
    Japan has so many things that bip at you that life here is one long bip-fest.
    In our kitchen there are no less than six things that bip:
    • The rice cooker bips to tell you that the rice is ready.
    • The breadmaker bips to tell you that the bread is ready.
    • The gas stove bips to tell you that the flame has gone out.
    • The fridge bips to tell that that you’ve left the door open.
    • The kerosene heater bips after an hour for some reason, and also at various other times for reasons that remain a mystery.
    • The microwave oven bips when it’s finished microwaving the food.
    • Even the oven toaster, not to be outdone, has a little bell that chings merrily when the timer finishes (NB: not strictly a bip).
    • Next door in the bathroom, meanwhile, the washing machine bips when it’s finished a wash, or to tell us off for leaving the lid open.
    All this leads to farcical situations like during dinner last week when we were all sitting at the table and something started beeping but nobody could work out what it was. We had to send one of the kids on a tour of the kitchen:
    • Freshly cooked rice? Nope.
    • Freshly baked bread? Uh-uh.
    • Hot food in microwave? Not this time.
    • Washing finished? Don’t be stupid, it’s dinner time.
    • Stove off? Check.
    • Fridge door closed? Of course.
    • Must be that silly heater again…
    etc etc etc.
    Or like the other day, when I was standing in front of the fridge minding my own business when TWO lots of bipping went off SIMULTANEOUSLY, which really got me confused.
    It turned out that I had both the door and the vegetable drawer open at the same time, naughty me.
    So I’m thinking that one day soon when I’ve got nothing better to do I’m going to taunt the fridge by opening up the door and BOTH drawers all at the same time and just stand there listening to the cacophony of indignant bipping it serves up. And maybe I’ll blow the stove out and cook up some rice and some bread and heat up some food and leave the washing machine lid open and turn on the heater too, just for fun. And maybe I’ll set my watch and phone alarms off as well, why not.
    Um… maybe I should get out more often.

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  • Technology update

    February 13, 2010  |  3

    Hot on the heels of the arrival of the internet comes the excitement of the new mobile phone.

    When I first arrived I had to get an evil pre-paid mobile phone because I didn’t have the proper visa. Actually the phone itself wasn’t too bad — especially compared to the antiquated old thing I was using in Australia — but the idea was always to upgrade to a shiny new one as soon as the visa came through. (At one stage I was considering getting an iPhone because the phone company was running a special campaign in January, but unfortunately that finished before my visa came through.)

    However the new phone I got on Friday is a pretty good consolation prize. First of all, it looks like a phone on one side and like a camera on the other; when you open up the screen and flip it around, it turns into an 8 MP camera with a screen on the back. You can also pull out its tiny little aerial and watch TV on it. It has all the usual features like the internet, emails, games and music, news and weather updates; but unlike my old phone, you can actually see what’s happening and read the text, which is kind of handy. It also has Japanese and English dictionaries. It can scan and convert Japanese and English text (such as a newspaper), and can even read a business card and enter the details in your address book. You can store money in it and use it as a credit card to pay for things, or to go through the turnstiles at the train station. You can even link it to your kid’s phone and track their movements by GPS (Ruby’s going to love that).

    There are probably heaps of other things that you can do with it but I’ve only had 24 hours so far. (Oh yes, I almost forgot: it also has a nice bright light on the back that you can use as a torch.)

    But the best thing is that this beastie is already considered old technology (the latest model has a 12 MP camera as opposed to a pathetic 8 MB and comes in lots of different colours), which means that the monthly repayments are precisely ¥0.

    So it feels good to have finally joined the mobile technolgy revolution, especially as I was lagging so far behind in Australia. I really felt in need of a new gadget, and Japan is definitely the place to satisfy that need.

    Dunno what I’ll do when I get bored with the phone though; I might have to buy one of those new iPad thingies.

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