Brush with technology...
Jun. 21st, 2007 08:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
khiemtranMy last taxi ride was quite amusing.
I had an inkling of what was going to happen when I told the driver I wanted to go to "Sutherland" and he didn't know where it was. (It's a fairly small part of Sydney, but it should be at least fairly well known). Luckily, as suburbs go, it's easy to find. You basically just head south from the airport on the Princes Highway and you can't help but hit it.
Anyway, the driver kept asking me for details about the address and I kept reassuring him that I could get him there. "I have a GPS," he explained, as he breaked and accelerated erratically, and pointed to a shiny new Tom-Tom on the dashboard that I hadn't noticed before. Oh, a GPS! That's different. And all he has to do is enter my address and it will guide us there all the way. Now, this is more like it.
I looked on with interest as he started entering the details on touch screen, glancing up occasionally as we swerved between lanes. It took about ten minutes and three attempts to get the thing into the right mode and with the right address, during which time we travelled maybe six kilometres and did a lot of swerving. But, to the Tom-Tom's credit, it did indeed know about my address and the little trick about getting to the right road at the very last turn.
Unfortunately, at that point one of our tyres went flat, the spare tyre also turned out to be flat and I couldn't get an answer from the local taxi company hotline after fifteen minutes on hold, so I ended up walking home from two suburbs out.
I guess they're still working on that bit.
I had an inkling of what was going to happen when I told the driver I wanted to go to "Sutherland" and he didn't know where it was. (It's a fairly small part of Sydney, but it should be at least fairly well known). Luckily, as suburbs go, it's easy to find. You basically just head south from the airport on the Princes Highway and you can't help but hit it.
Anyway, the driver kept asking me for details about the address and I kept reassuring him that I could get him there. "I have a GPS," he explained, as he breaked and accelerated erratically, and pointed to a shiny new Tom-Tom on the dashboard that I hadn't noticed before. Oh, a GPS! That's different. And all he has to do is enter my address and it will guide us there all the way. Now, this is more like it.
I looked on with interest as he started entering the details on touch screen, glancing up occasionally as we swerved between lanes. It took about ten minutes and three attempts to get the thing into the right mode and with the right address, during which time we travelled maybe six kilometres and did a lot of swerving. But, to the Tom-Tom's credit, it did indeed know about my address and the little trick about getting to the right road at the very last turn.
Unfortunately, at that point one of our tyres went flat, the spare tyre also turned out to be flat and I couldn't get an answer from the local taxi company hotline after fifteen minutes on hold, so I ended up walking home from two suburbs out.
I guess they're still working on that bit.
