The Moment I Fell in Love With Technology

Yesterday my elder sister, Jayde, arrived home from New York for what is to be her first visit lasting longer than seventy-two hours in a number of years. Sitting at the kitchen table eating a pseudo-lunch of mini hotdogs she is writing some sort of list. Christmas shopping, I assume. She keeps checking her watch. She was to meet somebody at 3pm, though she is very tired from a long flight and reversing time zones. I smirk and predict she will cancel as she has done to many an acquaintance on previous visits.

I enquire if we can perhaps meet after work during the week for some sisterly bonding. She looks at her watch for a long moment. I wonder why this is relevant to making appointments on days other than today, so clarify I mean Wednesday or Thursday—not today. After another second she looks up from her watch with an endearing smile and said yes to any and all days. I feel rather special.

After peeling the fluro red skin off another mini hot dog and biting it in half, Jayde checks her watch and goes back to her list. It’s a white watch I’ve never seen her wear before. It is a digital watch made of rubber and is a curiously casual choice for someone who usually sports a high-shine, stainless steel designer analogue with an impossibly small face and no numbers. I narrow my eyes and look at it more closely. It has three rows of digital numbers. I can see the number 56, which makes no sense in context of time, nor date.

She peeks up at me, and seeing my head tilted sideways and eyes narrowed indulges me with an explanation.

“It’s counting down what is left of my life”, she offers. “This is all I have to work with, so it’s good to be reminded”.

Woah.

“It’s called a Tikker, or a happiness watch”, she continues. Though as I watch her seconds tick away, I kind of feel saddened by it. Seeing my long face she illustrates, “to be sad or happy? Tic-toc…”

I get it.  What an awesome concept! The time of day is not really as relevant as the time you have in the context of your existence. Thus the three lines of time: the first two lines count down your life: the years, months, days; and hours, minutes, seconds. The third line shows the current time.

Jayde has set her watch based on the presumption that she will live until 84 years of age. Based on family history and our fortunate standards of living, I suppose this is as good a guess as any.

She energetically gets up and heads out for her 3 o’clock meeting – I doubt she’ll ever again cancel anything she’s decided is worth scheduling.

“Tic-tohhhc”, she calls out from the doorway.

Tic-toc, indeed.

…

If, like me, you’ve decided this is an essential item in your Christmas stocking this December, you can find the Tikker watch here.