Always Know Where Your Towel, I Mean Telephone Is
Traveling light is very important, especially if you are planning to avoid organized trips and busy roads, and intend to explore your destination yourself. There are quite a few things that are a “must carry” (I borrowed this term from cable networks, but I mean it literally), essential things that you should never leave your home without. Among these you can find a gadget that only has a history of a few decades, but has become a very important part of our everyday life: the phone.
Have you read the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy? No? Well, shame on you, go find it at once – it is a hilarious and entertaining science fiction story written by one of the greatest British novelists, Douglas Addams. It has a passage about towels that can be applied to so many other things in our lives – including to phones. Let me quote the great writer’s Guide to the Galaxy on this:
“A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.”
The phone can be almost as useful as the towel in the above quote when traveling outside the country, especially if it is smart enough to have a GPS and internet access on it. Let’s see what you can do with a phone while on a trip:
– you can take pictures with it
– you can shoot short videos with it
– you can translate street signs or phrases in a foreign language
– you can find your destination using the included GPS
– you can plan your trips with it
– you can call for help with it (emergency calls can be initiated even if you’re not on your home network)
– you can listen to music on it
– you can play games on it, including the top casino games at Red Flush
– you can sell it or trade it for food, or even train tickets when you run out of money
– and, of course, you can call your loved ones if you want to, and the authorities (like consulates or embassies) if needed
Smartphones have become such important parts of our lives that nobody should leave home without them – especially when traveling abroad.
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