The Mobile Wave

A group of students were sitting in a training room waiting for the presenter to come in. The presenter walked in and was looking at them straight and started saying;

“Hi… How are you doing?”

The group said in chorus “hi!”

He suddenly said “Did you see the traffic today?”

The group was wondering maybe this was some sort of an ice breaker and one of them said “oh yes it was bad” and actually started having a parallel conversation with one another on how they had a tough time coming through the gullies.

The speaker said, “oh yeah it was terrible?” and then continued nonchalantly “Hey listen I’m in a training so let me… call you back…” removed his Bluetooth, looking at the crowd again and said “Hi… How are you doing?” the folks all looked blank at each other.

The presenter said, “Isn’t it such an irony that today we don’t even know who is talking to us and who isn’t?”

“Are we missing to see our own reality that’s around us? And that is what I’m here to talk about, ‘technology vs reality’ - the mobile wave”

Then he starts sharing few of the instances that he's had in his own life.

SIT - A

One of my friend walks into the restaurant the other day and while I was already at the table I saw him going towards another direction and I saw a well-dressed lady seated at the other table smiling at him. He was subtly waving his hand at her while almost near her suddenly turned and started walking towards the restroom. I looked again and saw the lady reaching out to her blackberry on the table… I realized what had happened and saw my friend looking at me with a snigger and making a gesture of hitting his head with his hand. I couldn’t stop laughing as this was very similar to the ad that came out for a mobile in tv earlier.

SIT - B

The other day I’m standing at the railway station waiting to pick up somebody and there is

this guy on the opposite platform waving frantically at me gesturing to come that side… I wasn’t sure what was happening but I understood it could be some emergency…he started using both his hands as if he was trying to tell me what happened and showing me some faster way to get to him. His gestures were… ‘go up’… ‘not too much’… ‘come down a little’… ‘get down’… ‘turn left… turn right’ and then ‘stop…’ I was almost going to get down on to the track to reach him even faster when I saw him reaching for the phone in his pocket and removing it to cut the call… he was telling directions to somebody at the other end to reach the station. Sheesh!

SIT - C

Back home, at one of my cousin’s wedding recently. It was a church wedding, they had practiced the wedding procession the earlier day as to

how the bride would be at the entrance of the church and the wedding planner would go near the crossing in front of apse and give a signal and then the bride would have to start walking along with the priest. This church had a long aisle and on the wedding day, the wedding planner had gone near the crossing in front of the apse, just to check the arrangements there and he hadn’t seen that the bride and priest had already assembled at the entrance. The planner gets a phone call and he starts gesturing while talking and everybody at the entrance start walking towards to the altar. They reach the altar and he still doesn’t notice and turns around just to see himself staring at the priests with a train of people behind them standing in front of his face. They had no choice but to finish the ceremonies from there on.

There was a lot of giggles heard inside the room as all of them were having a fun time the presenter continued, “Can you guys think or imagine some situations like this?”

One of the participant eagerly said “yes here is one... a traffic policeman on a call and he is giving directions to one of the political convoys while he is standing in some other area manning a different signal. In our country we do sometime depend on the traffic policeman more than the signal itself. Imagine they start following all his gestures, the traffic would flow from all the directions. It would be a scene to watch.” They all had a nice laugh.

Another participant while continuing to laugh shares another imaginative situation, “what if terrorists do this while getting ambushed by the army. The army is charging towards them when one of terrorists gestures while on the phone without looking. Dishkyaoon! Infact Army can start distributing free bluetooth to terrorists and then install snipers everywhere and keep calling their numbers and have a heated conversation about how the food is bad in their camp. Dishkyaoon, dishkyaoon!!” while making a shooting expression with his hand around the room. All others follow suit making funny shooting expressions.

The group had a wonderful time and presenting real situations made a good impact on the topic that the presenter had to cover. He felt pleased and continued, “so my dear folks while I do use a Bluetooth myself, as careful as we can be, let’s ensure that we are not getting too much engrossed into the conversation... and miss looking around... enjoy the technology as its been provided to you. But let’s not miss seeing our reality”

Here is my mobile wave... he wears his Bluetooth waves a bye as he walks out of the training room!!