Wednesday, July 08, 2009

Some Thoughts

Last night was nothing special. Varen came home just after 7pm and made us dinner. I mostly just watched Without a Trace. We had no water all evening so no relaxing reading in the bath time for me. Luckily it was back on in time for this morning's shower!!

Other than that I have two things on my mind.

The first is Lancet vs. Ampath. Okay, so awesome, we have more than one laboratory that can do blood work and whatever else it is they do (?). But how annoyed am I that I now have a Lancet form. Because my nearby Medicross only apparently accepts Ampath forms. Seriously folks, how difficult could it be? How different can your forms be? Could the nurses not just have accepted my form and used it to complete the necessary details on the other one? Why would a blood test spot in a Medicross even have a specific affiliation? Surely they just draw the blood, ensure the form of your choice is completed and send it off *to the appropriate laboratory*. Is this rocket science? Am I the only person who thinks this should be obvious? Anyhoo, at lunch today I'm off to find myself a freaking Lancet laboratory. Sigh.

The second is a question for all of you. So inventions, for the most part, are slowing and the focus in our lifetime realyl seems to be making the things we have smaller, better or faster. It's not like someone who was born in 1900 who was around to see brand new things like a car or a telephone etc. Our greatest invention in my lifetime is not exactly tangible, the Internet. Although I'm not sure I can imagine my life without it. What job would I have ended up doing if not working on computers? Not entirely sure, really. So anyhoo, I was thinking. If you could pick one thing to be invented before you die, what would your choice be (and please be more creative than "a cure for Aids")?

Mine? Mine is easy. I wish for teleportation. Seriously. Forget flying cars, teleportation would make everything just so much easier. You know, I don't think I like driving. But that's just because for the most part a) it's stressful (like when those folk in the lane next to you suddenly swerve into your lane at the last minute with no indicator because some moron has decided that stopping and blocking up their lane is the right thing to do) and b) it's tedious. I think I'd like driving just fine if I were the only one on the road. And I think that must be true for just about everybody. So that's reason A for teleportation. Reason B would definitely be travel. How much nicer would it be if I didn't have to waste half an hour in traffic getting to the airport, absolute ages driving around trying to find a parking spot, 90 minutes beforehand to ensure I can check-in before my flight leaves, 2 hours on the plane (waste of time that!) and then more time waiting for luggage and driving home on the other side (and doing that twice in 3 days !) everytime I went to Cape Town for the weekend? (This is especially pertinent since I would love to visit my folks more often than I get to currently!) And then the international options! I'll admit I'm nervous for my trip in October. It must sound almost crazy flying half way around the world for a week. It's going to take me 3 days (date-wise) to get home. This is all because of a) connecting flights and b) time-changes. How devine would it be to no longer have to worry about all that extra wasted time getting to and from some lovely holiday destination. I'd happily put up with the stress of getting a visa everytime if I could teleport almost instantly wherever I wanted to go. Oh, and it goes without saying that in my dream world teleportation would not be of the version where there is one device here and one device there and you have to book a time-slot to use it or something (although I'm sure those would exist too, this would no doubt end up defeating my "waste of time" issues with the current situation). Ideally I'd like one at home, so I can go anywhere on a whim. And it'd be so much more awesome if a "there" device wasn't required. You could just look up the co-ordinates of where you wanted to arrive on Google Maps or something, key them in and off you go. If I were a scientist, this is for-sure what I'd be focussing on right now!

3 comments:

The Chantal said...

but the teleportation would have to be co-ordinated and controlled, so that two people don't simultaneously teleport to the exact same spot at the same time, resulting in their molecules combining. but that's a good one, teleportation would be cool. My invention would be a neurotransmitter connecting the dream-part of the brain to a monitor, so that when you're dreaming it looks like a movie on the screen and is recorded, then when you're awake you can play it back, I have awesome action dreams, horror dreams, etc, would make good movies!

Louisa said...

I'd totally go for rocket packs so you can fly where you want to go yourself - or even just go for a leisurely Sunday fly about looking at things from a different perspective.

Only, I think they'd have to regulate it a bit - and if you fly like a wounded/drunk bird and generally make it unpleasant for the other flyers your rocket should be confiscated or you should be made to clean public toilets.

Tamara said...

I could think of all sorts of noble things I'd love to see invented, but something I personally would love to have is a programmable magnet with millions of different settings. For instance, if I could set it to only pick out the yellow beads in my bead box, instead of having to try and get them out one-by-one by hand, it would make my life that little bit easier.

Or, if I dropped a vase of flowers, I could set it to attract all the glass shards lying on the floor.

Or, if I put too much salt in the pot, I could use the magnet to extract it before it dissolved.

The applications would be endless, really.

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