An ode to the 21st century

RIGA - The last decade held a huge advance in technology, so that now at almost any given moment if you stop for a second you can catch yourself communicating to the rest of the world via the modern gadgets and applications fitted to your phone or laptop.

If you commute by public transport, you can’t help but notice that nowadays, even somebody’s grandmother is involved in the constant global information turnover through texting to her girlfriends that she’s been to a grocery store, telling about the woman at the counter who was particularly nice, and the onions are half the usual price. Thankfully they still don’t put this kind of information on their Twitter, but it won’t be long before that starts happening.

Sure, many of the things that one could never even imagine some ten years ago are now a part of our everyday life. Things like Wi-Fi and Skype. But are these things really that necessary? Do you need them on your cell phone? Couldn’t you live without knowing what the current weather conditions near the airport of Kyrgyzstan are?

If you have an iPhone, for example, you can choose from literally millions of applications so that at least one of them would be an exact match for you. Now you can even have your phone locate all the people in the area with similar interests that you have; they’ll have the same software installed on their phone. So if you’re cruising along the city streets and you have doubts about where to go to meet new friends, now all the information you need is a couple of clicks away.

The age of Information Technologies has made us transparent and vulnerable as we never were. Now all your friends know what you had for breakfast and where you went last weekend, from a record of your statuses on Facebook. You can no longer hide, because all the information about you is already on the Internet. Just try to Google your own name, and I’m sure that you’ll find a lot of interesting things about yourself just lying around, free for anybody to look through.

 If, for example, you’ve had a party involving some heavy drinking and a trip to a nightclub, but you don’t quite remember how you ended up in the place where you woke up, but your sixth sense tells you that it was a great party, there’s a pretty good chance of finding yourself in a video on YouTube with half a million views already.
But you should know one thing – while these high-tech toys are fun and everything, they will hardly ever do any good. Especially when most of them are particularly dangerous. Mobile phones emit radiation, screens spoil your sight, and sitting in a chair since Christmas causes muscle atrophy. So in order to recuperate all the energy wasted during Christmas holidays and become bright-eyed and bushy-tailed again, what you have to do is throw everything that has a socket into a plastic bag, suit up and go skiing.

Now, I am fully aware that the Baltics may not have the most fascinating, breathtaking or even longest ski slopes, but if you’re doing it for fun rather than sports, even the hills just outside Riga can be enough for the whole family or a group of friends to have a tremendous amount of pleasure. Take the ski resorts in Sigulda, for instance. The slopes are short and, to be honest, rather dull, but again, they’re not meant for setting world records, they’re meant for practicing for a trip to Switzerland next year, or at least Poland.

Most of the ski resorts offer accommodation for overnight stays and cook delightful breakfasts, so when in doubt – whether to stay a bit longer or not – choose the first option. Try skiing at the end of the day. It is far more beautiful to watch as the sun sets over the ‘mountains.’