the iPad, the stylus, and me

living in london means that my family misses me a lot, which means that i get wicked Christmas gifts like expensive Italian leather boots and all the cookies i want to eat (let's be honest though, Christmas around my house has always been pretty good :-). this year was no exception and santa was kind enough to bring me an...iPad!

yes, that's right. this late adopting, pay-as-you-go-Zack-Morris-phone toting gal has one of these new-fangled devices that does everything save flying me to the moon. sweet. however, i've quickly found that you can lead a technologically backward 31-year old to water but she doesn't completely know how to drink.

i'm catching on. slowly. remember people, i don't have an iPhone so i've missed the boat on things like urban spoon, iFart, etc. sadly i spent the first few weeks using iPad for things like:

- playing Paper Toss (amazing waste of time that i can't seem to stop letting consume me)
- playing hangman
- using the iPad as a digital cookbook. the cover i bought has two heights i can choose from to stand iPad up. handy!
- looking for the video functionality (really? how does this thing not have a camera in it!)

however, things like "app of the week" and corporate lunch n' learns are helping me to see the light, so i'm making my way into more interesting apps beyond those that provide mindless amusement. last week's app was penultimate, which was on sale for £.59p and very exciting to me, because it made me think "maybe i could use this bad boy at work for, gasp, productivity!"

visions danced through my head of combining my various to-do lists, client notebooks, etc. into one beautiful application that organised it all AND allowed me to email everything to myself. imagine the trees i'd save, the impressed looks i'd get from clients when i whipped out iPad in meetings. "isn't she savvy!" they'd think as i scribbled effortlessly, digitally, all the fruits of our labour into the wonder that is iPad.

eager to make these visions a reality, i dashed off to curry's last weekend to pick up a stylus. of course you need a special stylus for such magic, and of course apple don't make one. luckily, proporta saw a gap in the market (ok, so the stylus is actually for the iPhone but nevermind) and it only set me back £9.99. such a small amount for such an incredible investment! i couldn't wait to get the four-inch, rubber-tipped stylus out of its clamshell packaging and onto the touch screen.

in all the excitement, it seems i forgot that nothing is ever as easy as it looks and that like anything else, it would take time to perfect my ability to make a piece of rubber and a small computer produce something that looked remotely close to jen writing. i spent the first night desperately hoping to achieve greatness but alas. not so much. what i DID achieve were a lot of scribbles, mess ups, and generally illegible characters. after twenty minutes or so, i managed to produce this (never mind what it says):



twenty four hours, many failed attempts, and one very sore hand later i was able to produce something that actually looked like my handwriting (again, not the work of shakespeare but merely an attempt to write basically ANYTHING):



it's all in the angle, is basically what i discovered. i had the system down to a t when i realised that to achieve such perfection, i had to be curled up on the couch with the iPad resting on a raised knee. maybe not the best for client meetings?

needless to say, i am still practicing how to write on this thing when i am in a respectable position e.g. in a chair at a table. i did, however, discover that it is more fun to draw with the stylus than with my finger:



back to the mindless entertainment again, it seems, but i haven't given up and have been using iPad all week at work. it's for internal meetings only at this point, until i can get my skills to the next level OR until i can remember to turn off the eraser tool when i'm through editing. we'll see which comes first. in the meantime, i'm working on some serious calluses for my thumb and middle finger. ;-)

no boys allowed

seriously. unless you fancy reading about annual, er, ladies' checkups, then only girls will be interested in this post. (assuming said girls have any interest in seeing how government healthcare compares with private)

for those of you still left reading, i had to go in for my "wellness" exam last monday and instead of making an appointment with an ob-gyn, i had go to my general practitioner (GP). my appointment was set for 9, so i let my boss know i would be out of the office for at least an hour and trolled off to the doctor arriving five minutes early (a small miracle for me). in the states, i would have had to fill out a very long form, give someone some money, and then wait about 20 more minutes before being taken into the back room, getting weighed, handed a gown, and then made to wait about five minutes more before the doctor arrived.

this visit was a little different.

the nurse called me back after only two minutes of waiting, which was actually BEFORE my original appointment time. not so bad. we went into her office, which also had an exam table in it. we chatted for about 60 seconds as she explained the process would be pretty similar to what i went through in america. she then told me to lose the bottom half of my work getup and proceeded to putter around the room looking at the wall.

no gown. no privacy. interesting.

the "exam" was over in about 30 seconds and to the nurse's credit, was about the same as it is in the states minus the stirrups. except. that was it. no poking, no prodding, and no checkup for any of the usual stuff: blood pressure, heart rate, weight, etc.

so i asked some questions about why other parts of my body weren't included in the exam. the response was a short lecture on medical studies stating the ineffectiveness of having doctors do things like breast exams (women are supposed to do these themselves, which i do, but i always liked having a professional checking things out anyway), why pelvic exams aren't necessary, etc. i didn't bother asking about blood pressure because i never know what those readings mean in the first place.

she was very polite and answered all my questions, then said if i didn't have any more questions that someone would call me in two weeks. she also mentioned that i wouldn't need another appointment for three years.

what?!?

a lot can change in three years, right? i asked this and was given another lecture on medical studies and how things don't actually change that much down there and that three years was definitely an appropriate lag time between checkups.

there wasn't a lot i could do, and who i am to argue with an entire team of nhs researchers who apparently have a study to disprove everything i have ever learned about women's health? needless to say, i was back at work about 20 minutes after i left. that night i was still feeling slightly cheated, so i asked my flatmate about it. she is on private healthcare through her company and said that she can go every other year, and that the exam includes all of the standard bits i was expecting. every other year isn't great but it is better than every three! i know my company has private healthcare for us but i'm not sure how it works. i shall have to ask but in the meantime, i'm left scratching my head about who's really right here, how often i really need doctor checkups, and what would happen to me if, heaven forbid, anything ever goes wrong with this little machine i call my body...