Even as communications improved, sometimes the sheer location precluded regular contact. I went away on a 3-week trip to Antarctica in 1994 and managed only one, very brief satellite phone call back to my wife from the bridge of the Navy research vessel, the SAS Protea.
Looking back I realise that being out of touch must have been a strain for her, particularly with no adult company and two young kids for most of the waking hours.
Today, when I am abroad, I use e-mail frequently – especially if I am in a time zone where voice communication is inconvenient – as well as SMSes and the ubiquitous WhatsApp.
When bandwidth and time zones permit, I often Skype… although sometimes the reality of face-to-face can have a stultifying effect on conversation.
Maybe it’s just me but there is something about imagining, rather than seeing, that elevates the mundane to the romantic.
That’s why I really like the latest MTN TV ad for its “Hello World” affordable foreign roaming packages. It’s all about family and about staying in touch, and how hearing of the voices – separated by half a world – reminds us of the importance of family and friends.
It’s done cleverly, too – by using split screen, which shows us dad on one side, on business in London; and his son, on the other, getting on with life. And that life includes homework… Really Dad? Really.
It’s natural, it’s heart-warming and positions MTN as the electronic tube through which you can connect with your family. That you can do that for longer, because it is more affordable, is a bonus.
An Orchid for MTN.
I find DStv’s “Know More” series of ads to be entertaining and intriguing as they profile some of the more intelligent programming on the bouquet and show how absorbing it improves your knowledge.
You don’t have to market that to me. When I am allowed to (and my wife lets me get away with it far more often than my daughter: she commandeers the TV remote when she is home from varsity), I love nothing better than the History or Discovery channels.
As an aircraft nut (it’s even more severe than my love for cars), I will watch anything with wings and with nuts and bolts.
However, I do draw the line at watching James May reassemble a lawnmower.
(Only the perverse English would make a TV show with that sort of subject matter.)
So when I spotted the excellent Channel 4 documentary Guy Martin’s The Last Vulcan, I almost slobbered.
Even though I would be out when it aired, I pushed the record button.
I wanted to see the story of the last flying Avro Vulcan, the four-engine jet that was the mainstay of Britain’s nuclear strike capability right up into the 1980s.
So imagine my anger when I got, instead, Fast n Loud Demolition Theater. I tried twice more to record in the time slot when DStv promised the Vulcan show would appear, but I got Richard Rawling and his Texas car-building clowns.
Know more? It would be nice, DStv, if you knew enough about your programmes to air them in the correct slots.
When you fail to deliver on a marketing promise, you will always get an Onion from me.
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