Thanks, Google, For Fixing My One Missing Man Skill

        It's said, by nobody in particular, that men and women are very different. The way they act, the way they interact, the way they think and the way they do things. In fact if you know what to look for, you can see it very clearly. Any man out there who has been in the scary position of being around a lady when she starts crying will, having resisted the very male impulse to run the hell away and hide, be totally perplexed that all the top notch solutions to the problem aren't met with a steely handshake and an offer of a pint, but with a loud "you just don't understand!". Nope, we don't understand. That's because men try and fix problems that their friends tell them about. They will suggest that the solution to a broken dishwasher would be to either remove the front plate and reroute the auto-transponder around the resistor to boost the flux-generation or some other solution with impressive sounding yet totally made up words. If he can't do this, then a simple suggestion of a new machine (because it's a gadget), with some handy haggling tips thrown in before reverting back to the aforementioned beer. If the guy asked a female friend about the dishwasher becoming as useful as a laserdisc player, he'll probably get a response along the line of "how does it make you feel?". Not very good normally, as it means spending all day in John Lewis instead of watching Match Of The Day.



        I personally have many Man Skills. I can tell, for example, exactly where a sound is coming from pretty precisely. My hand-to-eye coordination is fantastic, meaning I can throw peanut M&Ms in the air and catch them in my mouth so flawlessly it should be on my CV. I can put up a shelf without losing a leg or half my earnings in a lawsuit. A barbecue is safe in my hands, and I can tell if a book case will fit through a doorway simply by looking at it. I will often haggle, reasonably well, for fun. But the one thing I seem to have dropped on the way out the door when picking up all my other man skills, is navigation. Seriously, do not ever ask me to get you from point A to point B, because we'll end up seeing point T, point 4 and point # before we get to B, if we get there at all. See, being able to point north is something that most guys can do, and in fact I can do as well, but only either after secretly referring to a compass or having a total guess at it. I will then proceed to take you in the wrong direction and then you'll eventually have to ring someone and ask why all the roads start with the world "Rue" and all the shops start with "Le". I once spent about two hours on a simple journey from my house to a train station no more than 25 minutes away, because I simply couldn't find it.

        So you'll forgive me for being extremely excited to hear that, after saving my backside endless times, Google Maps is making a new setup, so you can see where you are in 3D. Seriously, having a map feature on my eye-fone has saved me and my timekeeping skills more times than I can remember, because being able to change the oil on a car or build a fire is of no use when you're running around the centre of Cambridge, a city that is seemingly disgusted at the very notion of labelling their streets in anything like a helpful manner, while trying to find a tiny office building in a row of other buildings that look exactly the same. Being able to whip out your phone that will tell me which direction I am looking at is just the best thing in the world, especially in a place where the streets are not laid out in an easy to work out criss-crossy pattern like New York, but in the sort of pattern of lines you'd expect if you put a firecracker in a box of shoelaces.

        But the one thing that always gets me, after I have arrived and put my phone away, normally with no battery left as the map has drained it's lifeblood like an electrical vampire with a compass, is that this is exactly what I drew in year 5 when I was a kid! A portable map that took you exactly where you want to go, and was able to tell you exactly on the map you were, even to the extreme of which side of the road, or which side of the room. I mean, I would look at Ziggy in Quantum Leap and think, after wondering why it looked like someone had built it from those colourful counting blocks you used to use in Maths, that someone needed to invent something like this! I mean, Ziggy could tell you stuff while you're walking, but so does Wikipedia. And now I can navigate like a pro, with 3D! Which means I can see an actual picture of the building I'm going to, rather than a flat picture of the roof.

        So now I can successfully find my way around the world like everyone else, I can work on improving the skills of every other guy out there. Maybe something that tells them exactly what to say when their lady friends are upset. Just think of the arguments that'll save, leaving more time to sit in front of the TV, by the table you built. That is, until you get shouted at for not fixing that stupid dishwasher.

        Maybe some things never change.


Images credited to FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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