Daily Dose by Bikram Vohra
My son in law has just bought an iPhone Plus, something that does everything his old phone used to do but only better. It is a sleek piece of silver steel or titanium, (not that I would know), and after I hide my 99 dirham Nokia so the difference is not too stark I say, “but does it auto-mute when my daughter (your wife) is ticking you off so you don’t forget to buy the right bread on the way back from office after a tiring day.”
He says, technology hasn’t got that far yet but this phone just feels good in your hand and it has all the features of the iPad with a phone to boot. Since 80 per cent of the features on my iPad are pristine and that means never used (IMBD, Pandora, Shazam, flipboard, podcasts, goodreads to name a few) I am so far back in the race it doesn’t matter.
He has a computer screen that is larger than my ‘dad we love you this is for your birthday TV flat screen’ and compared to my grand-daughter’s iPad mine looks it has just had two rounds with Mary Kom. There is a scratch on the screen which disappears if you hold the square titled to the right so it works. I showed him my ten year old laptop and he said he has a friend in the USA who knows someone in the Smithsonian in case I am interested in donating it. He says no one uses Windows 98 anymore. Look, he says, to everyone this computer still has a Mr Stick on it, wow, that’s way out.
Then there is the other son in law. He and my daughter are new parents but that doesn’t stop his routine. He gets up at 5 am to run 10 kilometres and I have this grand suspicion he does it just to make me feel old and mouldy. He denies this but then after we have played badminton and I am gasping like a beached whale he warms up with 15 kilo weights and a casual 100 push ups for the next 30 minutes. It wouldn’t be so bad if he did all this before we played but after… that’s hurtful. And when all this is done and I am tottering up the stairs to reach my bed so I can recover, he goes twice around the park. He is now planning to run from Dubai to Abu Dhabi for charity. I get tired driving.
In the upstage department these two win hands down.
One day I shall get even, just figuring out how… any ideas.