BOY, do I love technology.I say this on account of my new alarm clock.
I recently bought a new, technology-heavy alarm clock that allows me - this blew my mind - to determine the interval between me hitting the snooze button and the alarm sounding again.
Armed with this powerful new feature, I was able, just a few days ago, to put in a record 22-minute snooze - a feat tech-less prehistoric man could only dream of. (The most prehistoric man could hope for was five minutes.)
But as wonderful as that is, it is not the only thing I love about technology.
The other great thing is that it is developed by scientists. Why is this so great?
Well, because a lot of scientists - and I say this with the utmost respect - are absolutely rubbish when it comes to picking up girls.
I do not make this sweeping stereotypical generalisation without basis. (I make it without research.)
At one stage in my life, I spent four years pretending to study computer engineering and, as a result, hung around almost exclusively with such people.
During that time, I witnessed on numerous occasions us science people crash and burn when putting on our smoothest moves.
We would head back from our failures and console ourselves at our computers, working on something we hoped would help us score with the girls.
It was at this stage of my life that I wrote a bit of software where pictures of this girl I was after would dance according to whatever music was playing. (I showed her this particular effort. We are not together.)
But that is not the point. The point is we are working on it. And there are way smarter people than me out there failing with girls, which is to say some great things have been invented in the past for the sole purpose of trying to hook up.
I dare say practically every major invention by a guy had something or other to do with a woman.
Just take the Internet, for example. Oh sure, the inventors might say it was designed for military communication, but those of us in the know understand that it was made to download naked pictures and chat up girls through MSN.
But coming back to my tech-loving, I must say my favourite contribution of scientists to the dating game is the SMS message.
I came to a new heightened appreciation for the romantic role text messages play while at a dinner where a friend was grilled (not literally) over a love interest he was in denial about.
We were getting nowhere as he hemmed and hawed, but we made a breakthrough with the question: How many SMS messages do you send to her a day?
'About two or three,' he said and that sent everyone into hysterics.
It got me thinking about why we considered the frequent text messages so telling, and here is my conclusion after some 20 seconds of deep analysis: It is nearly impossible for two normal single people to have that much to say through little messages on the phone.
As a single guy, I never sent anyone text messages every day. There's just not enough material. You have to keep it short, so it's not like a letter and yet it needs to be urgent enough to justify a text message.
To be able to sustain such a textual relationship, one must necessarily delve into the realm of superfluous, random, pointless messages - sometimes known as the 'good morning/good night' SMS.
These messages are of absolutely no use to two people not romantically interested in each other.
Despite the name, they can contain much more than a simple greeting. Rather they present unsolicited content that serves no purpose other than letting the sender reach out and touch someone. Picking up the phone may be a bit daunting and awkward, but a text message provides just enough distance.
Friends I discussed this matter with all admitted having sent someone they were interested in similar completely unsolicited messages.
'Yawn, so sleepy :o' or 'So many ppl in Orchard Road today' or 'I feel like a milkshake' were among some examples.
My personal favourite: 'Meow. I'm so full.'
I don't get what cat noises have to do with it. Whether it means she just ate a cat or whether cats are supposed to have 'full' meow, I don't know.
But those four words perfectly exemplify what I'm talking about. It provides the receiver no useful information apart from forcing him or her, for a moment at least, to think about you.
All right, if others can invent something that revolutionised courtships, surely I can make more of my dancing picture software. I'll get right to it, after this quick nap to re-energise.
Wake me up in an hour... make that an hour 22 minutes.
