"I have a question? Where in Italy does the Eurotunnel go?"

I’m sat in a hotel at the moment avoiding the Bay Area traffic before heading back into the city centre. Thought I’d get some work done on the laptop instead of sitting in traffic. I’m enjoying using the the Sprint PCI express data card — it’s more or less the same as a broadband connection — eminently usable.

There’s a dad and his daughter sat next to me — she must be about 12 years old. They’re speaking in American — that is, English, but at about 7-8 levels louder than the rest of the world seems to speak when they’re in a restaurant. So despite being at least four tables away from me, I can hear it all.

There’s a heated debate going on between dad and daughter about where the tunnel under the water from the UK to Europe goes. It’s excruciating because I feel like yelling out PARIS, FRANCE regularly whilst the two-and-fro continues. They’re wondering if the tunnel goes from London to Rome, or London to Florence. Where they got Florence from… I don’t know.

Anyway, the discussion moved from the physical to the future — that is, someone’s taking a holiday there soon. I think it’s the daughter. There’s a query. Dad says “you should ask your mom — text her now.”

Excellent, excellent. Of course this is Silicon Valley — they’re quite advanced when it comes to mobile so I was delighted to hear the suggestion from the father. I sneaked a look over and my heart withered slightly when I saw the dad handing over some piece-of-shit Motorola or LG. Not even a RAZR — think several generations behind. He handed it to the daughter to proceeded to hunt for the text menu… and…

Shit. She navigated the address book and just called her mother.

BORING.

BORING.

I was hoping she’d be a text demon. Interestingly: She doesn’t have her own mobile phone.

Ah well. I always find it so interesting observing mobile use ‘in the wild.’