By : Michelle Lim
I think most people of the current generation are so deeply seated into the technological era that they are always so ‘unconnected to stay connected’. Phones and social media have taken over our lives that we sometimes feel utterly lost without them. For example, the disastrous dead phone battery situation.I use to be one of them. I still am, but I’ve learnt how to ignore my phone.
It took a camping trip to Taman Negara some time this year for me to learn (or rather, realise) this. The campsite was rural – with run down electricity generators, makeshift bunk beds and unlit bathroom cubicles. It was any city folk’s nightmare and worst of all – zero cell service. Even making a simple call was tricky.
In such a situation, the iDevice generation (all thirteen of us, from ages 7 to 30 ) found ourselves forced to do things outside of our phone. And that was the beauty of it. Without our phones, we learnt how to do things that doesn’t involve only our thumbs. We had baseball and frisbee matches in the woods, caught ‘kelah’ fishes in the river with our bare hands, hiked through limestone caves (and met a lot of bats), rode a safari jeep to look for wildlife and even pitched a tent!
The whole time, we did the things that people used to do without technology. And not once did any of us take our phones out. Quoting my cousin, “This is the first time my iPhone battery life lasted me for two whole days without charging!” The takeaway here is that sometimes, you need to learn how to ignore technology. Switch it off or put it to silent mode, leave it in your bag – and you will realise how much joy, laughter and bonding you never knew you can experience, when your nose is not buried in your phone.
