What if it is more than just a phone?

Last Saturday I was playing a snooker tournament at the Zuma in Peer, Belgium. As the preliminary rounds of this tournament are played in a round robin system, I had some time between games. So I decided to pick my iPhone and do some reading.

About an hour later I go outside to get some fresh air, and the owner of the club asks me whether I don’t have an issue with playing snooker since my iPhone always seems to stick to my hands. He then also tells his wife that I have 3 laptops at home, after which she decides to ask me: “You don’t have friends, do you?”

My reply was a very stern “I beg your pardon”, and I decided to leave it at that. Sometimes it is not worth going into an argument.

But later that evening I thought of an excellent reply. Why o why not at the same moment, but that happens too often.

“Would you have asked about my lack of friends if I was holding a newspaper or a book?”

Because that was what I was doing: reading De Standaard Online and The Power of Pull via Kindle for iPhone.

My previous post was about prejudice, and this one was a pretty clear example as well.

These days a phone can be so much more than a device for calling or texting people. I wonder how long it will take before the non-tech people will start to realise that fact?

What if you don’t judge a book by its cover?

Two weeks ago my wife and I spent a few days visiting the Belgian coast. We stayed in Oostende, but took an afternoon and evening trip to Blankenberge, where we were looking for a restaurant to try the famous mussels. My wife has an aunt that has a flat in Blankenberge, so we called her for some advice. It turns out that her daughter had mussels a few weeks earlier, and she had them at the restaurant / beerhaus Oberbayern.

We were quite skeptic as we were really looking for a more traditional Belgian coast restaurant that has more of a fish kind of specialty. But we were tired and did not feel like searching anymore, so we went for it.

Needless to say, and judging by the topic of this blog post, we were very pleasantly surprised. The mussels were delicious. They ware also all you can eat, but the portion they served us was already too big for us, so no second servings for us.

Again an example where you do not always can judge a book by its cover, or a restaurant by its name or interior, or ???

What examples can you share with me where you had initial thoughts that turned out to be completely wrong? Where have you encountered prejudice?

What if you can improve your efficiency on the keyboard?

After finishing high school I had to make a choice, continue my studies in economics (which I was quite good at), or follow my natural strength with languages. After some sleepless nights I choose to go to Secretarial College, as I did not really fancy a job as translator or interpreter.

This turned out to be a pretty good choice, because I immediately found a job after 3 years of having 6 hours of French, English and German a week. Another benefit is that this gives you a pretty good general education.

And here the topic of this blog post. In the first year of secretarial college I learned to type blind. And even though I cursed every minute of it whilst following the course, I am now extremely happy to have learned to type blind. If I sometimes see some colleagues struggling to type with 2 fingers, or having to watch the keyboard all the time, I realise what a productivity gain this has become.

Here is the result of the online speed typing test I just did:

I am surprised, I did not type this fast in secretarial college. I guess you do learn by doing.

Want to test your speed typing skills, here is the link to the online test.

So, how much more productive could you become? Let me know in the comments how you did on the test.