GPRS

I am astounded at the leaps in technology that I have seen in the time I have lived in South Africa.













For a fairly minor amount of cash, you can buy a GPRS - either dedicated to only GPS useage, or as a part of a cell phone. The last time my cellphone contract was updated, I chose a Nokia Navigator cellphone. The GPS system that I can access with this is truly amazing! It knows where you are, and how to get to an address even if you have never been there before - and even if you are driving faster than the speed limit!

I often got phone calls whilst I was using the GPS function, and I often found that I either missed the call (the cell was too far away to use!) or I had to turn off the GPS whilst I answered the call!

I therefore invested a relatively small amount of cash and bought a dedicted Garmin Nuvi set.

I used it the first time yesterday, and was rather put out at first that it was telling me something in Afrikaans! I can understand that language - if you speak slowly - but choose not to speak it. I feel that I speak it with a really english accent, and probably mispronounce half of the words that I mangle in my speech! It was rather offputting to have my GPS telling me in Afrikaans to do something! I did Afrikaans at school for "O" Levels, but these are British based exams. I ended the 4 years study with a distinction, but as with anything, "you use it or lose it!" I have always used English, probably with a really colonial accent, since Rhodesia (where I was born and grew up) used to be a British Colony!

I quickly pulled over and changed the language to UK English, rather than American English! I am astounded that even in Britain, there are areas where they think that they talk English, but it is not the English I grew up speaking!

I often joke that we use the spiritual Gift of Tongues when the USA Missionery Elders come to Richards Bay and talk a really wierd dialect! By the time they return home, I am convinced that they have developed a language that even their mothers cannot easily understand!

When I was in England on my way home from the USA, I found that there are some really strange dialects - that cannot be understood even in the next village! In Africa, the next village is probably on average, 45 kilometers away, but in England, there cannot often be more than 5 kilometers between villages! Before I first came to SA, I was only aware of one computer in Salisbury (now Harare) and that occupied 2 floors of an office building that occupied 2 downtown blocks. It was on the 10th and 11th floors, so that there was a minimum of dust around! It had cost then several million dollars, and when I emigrated to SA, $1 Rhodesian would buy you $1 US. With technology, I have 2 laptops, that are in fact rather big as laptops, 1 for my home use and the other for my Church use! When I give a talk in Sacrament on behalf of the District Council, I like to draft the talk on my Church Use computer. In drafting it, I get to absorb the content and can talk for 20 minutes on a subject. I cannot talk for long in Richards Bay as the air there is very polluted, and my diaphram (muscle that controls breath - and by inference, speech!)starts to complain. I cannot talk for very long in the Bay, as my muscle that controls breath reacts to poor air quality. If I use an asthma pump, it does help, but the air still causes me to speak badly!