ASJournal: Technology vs. Santubung

By Amde Sidik

How many of us these days are over relying on technology? The answer is very many indeed. Think about little beast- a mobile phone, just imagine what do you feel if all of a sudden, at the time you need it most it turns out dark! Battery runs out. Or on the other hand, say you have forgotten your mobile phone in a car or on the dinning table at home and you are now about 100 kilometers away. It isn’t a nice feeling, is it?

I was in Santubung with my family-my wife and my 10-year-old boy recently (August, 2007). The journey wasn’t really planned but somewhat to make up the the last school holidays we missed or perhaps the abrupt decision has the bearing on my son’s influencing us upon listening to the advertisement over the Dot FM radio. The djs often saying or were they insinuating the listeners: why going to Paris, London, or New York, when we have Santubung, Kinabalu-Kundasang or Sipadan, Langkawi, Port Dickson alike!

Off we went to Santubung Sarawak about 40 kilometers from Kuching City.

As always, we were equipped with gadgets: mobile phones, MP3, pda (personal digital assistant) and the most important one as family tradition is camera. Three people means three cameras, no sharing. Loaded with at least with, a one-gigabyte SD memory cards each-I don't means to be pompous or indicating I have special knowledge on this stuff. No, but it is just something I would like to keep up with while still kicking.These gadgets may provide little spark while on the journey and back home.

I have a new camera –not that new, but I called it new is because I seldom used it as I have another Ixus 750 with 7.5 mega pixels. This one is 10 mega pixels.

I have not spent time studying this one- this is where I had problem. You can say, that new does not mean better or productive in my case. I forgot the manual and now relying on what I know from the older camera. Click! Click! Click! That is what you do, isn’t it?

With the new camera I took hoooo…many dozens snaps! Anything unusual in my eyes. Sometimes I talked and asked questions to people- what's that, what's this, how why and when sort of. Some respondents are friendly some are less so. No, I am not a reporter, but without answering those questions mentioned, one has no way of knowing what one wants to know from what one sees. The moment I have time I would enter the details into my little pda.

One more thing I do not trust camera that attached to mobile phone even with three mega pixels I would prefer it separate, that camera is camera and mobile phone is mobile phone. Why? In my experience it never work as good as separate hardware.

I stored enough pictures to select from and with the aid of pda, my work is handy, I have enough time to relax, sleep or do nothing. That what the technology can do. It makes us happy, or it makes lazy at the sometime.

While waiting for boarding in I was then happily playing with my toy- the camera. Without really using my brain as I didn’t really need to, and forgot about logic plays important role in technology-press-press-press. I had in fact pressed the wrong button the whole pictures, that many dozens taken-zeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrp gone! Screen turned whitish! Bloody hell! I said. Wow! That's very English said my son sitting at the other end of the bench.

Back at home, trying to tidy up the contents of my little pda, using usb connector to my notebook, appeared: yes or no, trash or save. Wrongly and hurriedly clicked- trashed! All has gone whitish again, like what I did with my camera. What has happened? I can’t really tell, no matter how many times I pray in a day thing like this can still occur. What I was left with was one little picture of mount Santubung, see on the top!^ No, we in Sabah don’t call it gunung Santubung but bukit Santubung. It is not qualified to be called mountain-Picture on the top, a legendary Gunung Santubung of Sarawak