Drained

Every once in a while, I catch myself writing about writing, which is unfortunate, because the purpose of this blog is to write about travel. But I haven't written much about travel the last couple days--or anything for that matter--despite the incredible trip I went on this weekend. In a strange turn, I find myself writing about, well, not writing.

The lapse is not for want of ideas. This weekend inspired several topics for riffing. But I faced trouble with technology mid-trip. Blogging for me is not a simple process that requires a single piece of hardware. To make my posts visually appealing, I like to bury thumbnail-sized preview images in the text. This fastidious method demands a multi-step process that requires a proper internet browser. All I brought with me on the trip was the phone, and it doesn't make the grade.

Before the trip to Thailand, I had solved the line break problem, which was caused by posting through email, by using an HTML email client to eliminate character limits. But still, using the phone caused me a slew of hangups. Email doesn't seem capable of labeling posts or adding large, hyperlinked photos. Also, I can't caption more than one photo per post, and the images show up small. A simple workaround to these problems would have been to log onto the blog's dashboard through the phone's browser and encode the images through HTML. But this workaround requires the image URL, and the feeble little browser on the phone won't let me get at it. No matter what, a laptop is required equipment. Leaving mine at home made no difference. Even if I had brought it, I need internet access with the laptop to get the URL's. We had no wi-fi in the countryside places where we stayed, and I deleted my tethering application sometime during one of many software resets on that brick of a phone.

Another setback to posting over the weekend in Vĩnh Long was the lamentable lack of batteries. I could have spent more time at least taking notes and drafting outlines if I wasn't worried about running out. The phone is good for short posts, but longer ones burn up power, and I have a tendency to spend four or five hours alone just writing a single post, not including the time-consuming challenge of coding pics.

Besides blogging, I need batteries because the phone is my link to the outside world, a way for me to contact Mike or Lữ if I get lost, a camera, and a Vietnamese-English dictionary. I need battery power, and I run out quickly and often. What's worse, I didn't bring a portable charger this weekend.

To get me through, I leeched battery top-ups from Lữ's computer. But she didn't bring her charger either, and it wasn't right of me to sap her battery when she needed it too. I held off on nicking a recharge until she'd used as much power as needed to share her beautiful photos to her little cousins.

I learned something about myself in those moments when I was low on batteries. I felt a bit like I was stranded on a lifeboat at sea, and the red, blinking power meter was a steadily dwindling supply of drinking water. I can imagine that people adrift on meagerly-stocked lifeboats tend to reevaluate priorities. I realized I'm beginning to get a little technology dependent. Once, I thought any kind of dependency was a bad thing, a limitation, a liability. There's too much we're dependent on as it is; just look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs, the pyramid describing growth toward self-actualization.

Though the phone, the battery is linked to various levels of the pyramid. I looked down at the blinking red light asked myself, what do I do when the phone dies? How can I manage if I can't take pictures of my travels? Or look up a bus route? Or translate, "I'm lost, could you help me find my way?" How would I get by without immediate access to the omniscient modern day oracle, Google, for song lyrics, engine schematics, and snakebite remedies? And how on Earth did people ever manage once upon a time without the internet, without the cell phone, without being perpetually plugged in with one another? I can't remember. And I don't think I'd want to go back to those liberated times, when there wasn't so much need for a battery.

I find my own psychological batteries are a little drained at the thought of catching up all the stories from the weekend. This trip was a cartwheeling escapade of experience: country living, scenic beauty, natural splendor, exceptional hospitality, and incredible food. All of it deserves riffing. I suppose if I had enough batteries in my phone to post just a few paragraphs each day over the weekend, at the very least I would have less to catch up on now. At least I've got a wall outlet and stories to tell. And I have a feeling, once I'm all caught up, my own batteries will be more or less recharged. Lesson learned. Have charger, will blog.