Morning observations...

Monday 10th August 2009

So a couple of things came to mind this morning and I thought it best to write them down before they vanished into the depths of my woeful memory.

The first was just an observation; something I had noticed before but didnt really think about.

Alex and I were driving past the gas station on the way to the train station and a police car was stopped there. One of the officers was re-fueling their vehicle, a marked police vehicle. As I said I had seen this before but it suddenly occurred to me that there seemed to be something a little skewed about this. It just seems odd that their vehicles aren’t somehow or other always filled with fuel...

I quite often see police vehicles tearing up the road that this particular gas station is situated at the top of, lights flashing and sirens blaring. And for a moment I imagined the scene inside one of these vehicles:

** Unit 452 responding to the incident logged at 16:42 by Comms central. Incident number 23392. Complainant has witnessed offender’s breaking and entering neighboring property at 415 Gt North Road we will be on site in approximately 2 mins. Awww shit, sorry Comms we’re going to have to stop and get some gas.**

Wait... what?

*****************************

The other thing that came to mind this morning was how much we take for granted the ease of telecommunication these days.

If I could have imagined the ability to carry around a portable communication device that would connect me with the rest of the world and was powered by a battery that would last upwards of a week when I was a boy, I would have considered it only that – imaginary!

I became involved with electronics when I was a very young boy somewhere around 9 or 10 years old.

The Z80 processor was the height of computing technology in those days. Communication with my best buddy who lived next door was restricted to wet strings attached to tin cans and even then we had to go outside to use them in order to keep the string stretched taught and in a straight line so it couldn’t touch anything else. In fact by raising our voice a little more than what was required in order to use the tin can phones we could hear each other anyway!

A year later we had managed to string a four cored wire between his house and mine by utilizing the fence around my family’s swimming pool and the very large back lawn that separated his house from mine.

We then connected several old telephone handsets and some batteries to the cable to form the basis of a very crude telephone. This was entirely more satisfactory and a vast improvement over the tin cans and wet string. Unfortunately it did make us extremely unpopular with my buddy’s father when shortly after the initial installation of this ground breaking cable laying his father decided to mow the lawn... It took him several hours and a great many Dutch cuss words to disentangle the mower blade.

So for me this tiny mobile device I carry in my pocket is still a source of amazement despite understanding the complexity of its operation.

I like that feeling.

I recommend standing back from oneself and looking at that small device and being amazed.

It wasn’t always like this, remember...

Currently listening to:

Nightmares on Wax - Smokers Delight

...ahhhhummmm

Today, Thursday August 6^th is to be the official first day in my quest to remove “ummm” from my spoken vocabulary.

It need only be removed from my spoken vocabulary because funnily enough it has never been something that I would write. Sure I might use it deliberately if I wanted to but it never pops up in my prose of its own apparent free will, unlike the manner it does whenever I’m speaking.

I tend to use ‘ummm’ as a filler in normal conversation to ‘stop the gap’ in those micro moments of awkward silence between words.

I also use it, embarrassingly, to fool myself into believing that I am improving the continuity of my speech.

Being of a somewhat ‘know it all’ disposition I have also learnt that continuously fitting ‘ummm’ into a conversation at the right time will not allow the person I am speaking to any chance of getting a word in, thereby allowing me to continue on telling them where something is at without fear of distraction by sidetracking interruption or the facts!

By the same token I often get so carried away with myself that my mouth seems to take off at a hundred miles an hour leaving my brain in the dust because it can only muster a piddly forty miles an hour. ‘Ummm’ then gives me the time I need for my brain to catch up with my mouth.

In reality I have no need for ‘stop the gap’ tools as in all honesty I quite enjoy awkward silences, it gives me an opportunity to observe facial expression and read body language so that I can determine honesty, genuine behavior or lack thereof.

As far as improving speech continuity; that is bollicks! From my viewpoint men whose speech involves a lot of ‘ummming’ present themselves as uncertain and lacking in confidence with regard to the topic of conversation they are currently engaged in. And when it comes to using ‘ummm’ as a means to do all the talking in the hope of convincing someone of how right you are – well that is just wrong! Likewise, if your mouth out distance’s your brain whilst talking you could be setting yourself up for a well deserved punch in the face!

So today hopefully will be the beginning of a much improved me and all I have to do is stop saying ‘ummm’

We’ll see...