I Hope you all enjoyed St Patricks Day. It just so happens to also be my Birthday. I have what must be the best day of the year to have a birthday. It’s a national holiday so I never had to go to school as a child. It comes slap bang in the middle of lent so everyone breaks out. There is a real party feeling to the day throughout the country, and last but not least hardly anyone forgets my birthday.
Today was also a big milestone for me…
No it is not a significant birthday but it is the end of an era. Today I exchanged my phone which looked like this
for an iphone.
My new phone and I had a rocky start. In order to begin using it I had to try to get the sim card into the phone. We tried to pull the iphone apart, as you would the old phones, but thankfully that didn’t work. Then we decided to google “how do you put a sim card into an iphone?” . The top suggestion was to watch a youtube video. This showed just how easy it was. Allegedly! However despite trying many times we could not get that poxy bit to come out of the phone, despite prompting it with needles, pins and everything else we could get our hands on. Luckily for us, and perhaps the iphone, my children woke up and within seconds all was sorted. When they asked me was I trying long I lied through my teeth and said we’d only tried once or twice.
Now hours later I am well on my way to being an iphone addict.
However I must admit I have been slightly sad to say goodbye to my old phone. It had very little to offer, but it did all it was supposed to. It was a phone in the old fashioned sense, in that it could make and receive calls and texts. Nothing else.
No camera or internet, but you could bounce it off the ground and it would still work perfectly.
One of my favourite memories of my old phone was a joke my daughter used to play with it.
On my phone was “the speaking clock”. It was a button you pressed which spoke the time. So as you pressed it it said, “the time is ……”.
Well my daughter used to pretend that the phone reacted to her voice. So she would say to the phone “What time is it?”. Then she would press the button without anyone realising and the phone would “reply”, “The time is……”.
Her smartphone friends were quite taken by this and inevitably they would decide they wanted to try it.
So over they would come and say “What time is it?”. At this point my daughter would not press the button so there would be no sound from the phone. Then she would say to her friends ” It’s voice recognition, so I don’t think it understands your accent. You have to speak with a Cork accent. Then she would ask it again, in a very exaggerated Cork accent, ( The Cork accent is a very sing song up and down accent and they are prone to using the word” boy” pronounced as “buy” in random places. For instance instead of saying “Hi”, they say “Hows the goin buy?”).
My daughters friends were game for this. They would line up to speak to the phone with an exaggerated Cork accent. My daughter would then press the button and the clock would speak, supposedly having “recognised” their accent. This actually made them even more interested and there would be a queue of people all lined up to speak in an exaggerated Cork accent. Eventually someone would cop what was happening and the fun would end.
Sadly such fun is now a thing of the past. It is time to leave behind the days when a phone was just a phone, and to embrace modern technology once and for all.
But it was fun while it lasted. Tonight I will have a little drink to the passing of my old phone. I might also have a drink to my birthday, St Patrick, Mondays, Children, Family, WordPress and whatever else I can think of!
Sláinte Happy St Patricks Day. xx
My thoughts on a page. 
Happy birthday 🙂
Thanks, just finishing off my day here with a little drink to me!!
Happy Birthday! And, you may have to resort to hiding your new iPhone every now and again…it IS rather addicting. Especially when you make such a giant leap in technology. 🙂
So far I’m really enjoying it. I didn’t think I would but looks like I was wrong!
Happy Birthday and cheers! 🙂
Thanks, I’ll drink to that! 🙂
Wait…hold on…. you get to live IN Ireland. And you are born ON St. Patrick’s day…. ah….. you certainly are the lucky Irish Colleen. 🙂
And tonight I feel lucky I can assure you. 🙂
🙂 Enjoy your doubly special day!
happy birthday tric, happy st. pats, happy new iPhone and everything else! i’m happy to celebrate in your honor )
You are a true online buddy, offering to celebrate so much with me! Thanks Beth. 🙂
Cheers to happy birthday and a happy st.pattys day as well!
Thanks a million. I’ve had a lovely day. I hope you enjoyed St Patricks day where ever you are.
Happy Birthday tric.
Thank you. It’s been a great day.
Happy Birthday!
Cheers! 🙂
Happy birthday Tric! 🙂 Once you get the lphone, there’s no turning back!
Thanks a million. Even though it’s not been long, I have to agree with you. I have definitely been called to the dark side! 🙂
A very, very happy birthday to you and Happy St. Pat’s Day too!
Thanks Deb. It was a great day. Having one final little drink to me, st patrick and what ever else!
Have one for me — just because you can! 🙂
🙂
Happy birthday! Go easy on the Ballygowan….it totally ruins the alcohol content of your drink.
Thanks J.D Luckily I never fell into that trap!
Have fun with your new iphone! I love mine…except the part about not being able to delete emails in groups or completely all at once. PIA, that. But you are going to really have fun with it! Keep us posted
Thank you. I am still enjoying getting to know it. It is a big step up.
Well, happy birthday! I think your husband has little reason to forget your birthday with it being St. Patrick’s Day and all! How nice to get a new iPhone! Here in the US we donate the old phones to domestic violence shelters. Enjoy the phone!
Thanks Jackie, I’d a great day and yes I’m delighted with my iphone. Very posh.
belated birthday wishes, tric !
p.s. good luck with the voice recognition on your new phone. Youtube has any number of videos documenting how a scottish accent baffles apple and google’s voice recognition software. I imagine a Cork accent will have similar problems being understood 😆
Thanks Duncan. I’ve not even ventured down the road of Sirus, I still haven’t recovered from my husbands hilarious attempts.
A little late Happy Birthday and Congratulations with your new phone.
Thanks Irene. I’d a great day and am still enjoying my new phone.
Happy belated birthday Tric, hope your head , and the new pone, are good this morning!
Thanks Joan. My head was very good today and I even made it for my first game of golf in four weeks!
Delighted to hear that!
Happy birthday, Tric! I can’t wait for some post about your adventures with Siri.
I did a post last year on my husbands dreadful attempts to come to grips with Siri. His accent is a lot stronger than mine. Thankfully he has given up any hope he can be understood. I have yet to try.
I hope you do. It’s great blog fodder.
Hope you had a lovely birthday!! Sorry it’s late. I’m recovering from our own celebrations in Galway with the mad in-laws. :0))
Ah it sounds like you had a good St Patricks Day Olivia. I’d a great day thanks.
It was too good. Can’t handle late night anymore. :0)
Happy birthday, Tric. What a great day to be born. And what a fab old phone you had. I wonder if Syrie(?) will recognise your accent. Apparently, she has something of a problem with the Scottish one. 😉 Cheers to you! 🙂 x
Thanks so much. I suspect Siri will have serious problems with my Irish accent, although I haven’t gone there yet.
More belated birthday greetings Tric – you will probably have to invest in a new upgraded corkscrew now or are you like me and are nearly converted to the screw cap? Isn’t it great when you can toss in the P word in your article and think you have got away with it until ————
Thanks CJ. I’d a lovely day. I must admit I love the screw cap. Anything that makes opening that bottle easier!
Great minds and all that – is it appropriate to say bottoms up to your reply?
Definitely! 🙂
Happy Belated Birthday!!! Hope you had a bit of craic. Send some Bailey’s my way and I’ll drink with you. I just finished having a talk with my son-in-law for not taking pics of my grandchildren at the St. Pat’s fun in Kingscourt.
Thanks I’d a great day. We had good dry weather here which is always a bonus for all the parades.
Love the Cork accent, hate the Dublin (marble mouth), Love the Cavan and Connemara.
Oh dear, I’m a natural Dub, but my accent is a mix of Dublin, Donegal, and Cork. Definitely a mongrel.
No you are a pure bred, on of those that come from many different things but is the most wonderful of all!!