I'm not normally a person who lets her emotions get the better of her.
I don't get upset too easily and I hope I come across as polite, rational and reasonable. I think it's unbecoming to be overly emotional, especially when you're in public.
But when it comes to dealing with anything vaguely electronic or electric, oh dear, what's wrong with me?
I'm ashamed to admit that I lose it. I get flustered, irritated, impatient and have little self-control. I am unreasonable to people around me, even those trying to help. I just want to scream in frustration.
The thing is, machines scare and overwhelm me, and make me feel totally stupid and defeated.
It's as if I'm lost in a jungle and everything is closing in on me and the only map I have that can help me escape is in Greek, and I don't understand Greek.
Take these examples.
I recently decided to get a printer for my home computer because there was something I needed to print urgently.
Normally I'd ask my tech-savvy friend to install it for me, which was what he did when I bought the computer, because I have absolutely no clue how to go about doing it.
He'll tell me which model to buy, I'd go buy it or he'll buy it for me, then he'll set everything up and hey presto, I'm ready to go.
This time, though, my friend's been uncontactable. All my phone calls and SMSes to him went unanswered, which meant I had to go solo. It was not a good feeling.
I did the next best thing and asked a techie colleague to recommend a printer model. That she helpfully did and even arranged for me to buy it straight from the supplier.
Thing was, who was going to install it for me? Even if the set-up instructions were broken down into a hundred idiot-proof steps, I was bound to bungle it.
I decided to seek professional help. For a fee, a shop in Funan Centre provides a home service.
When the man came, however, we discovered to our horror that I had not been specific enough when I bought the printer. The model wasn't compatible with my iMac. There was nothing he could do.
I called the supplier and managed to exchange the printer for one which was compatible, which they kindly delivered to my home.
The next week, another man from the shop in Funan came to get it installed. But for half an hour, he wrestled with the machine because it appeared that the model was, again, incompatible with the Apple.
After a long phone call to the supplier, he managed to sort things out and the printer was soon whirring and working.
Now, all this sounds at most a minor inconvenience, right? So why did the whole process of installing a printer feel like an odyssey to me?
Why did I feel, at various points, stupid, annoyed, helpless, vexed and defeated by it all? Worse, I had even shown my unhappiness to the supplier and the man who came to install it. I was rather rude. (I'm sorry.)
This sense of fear and loathing always sweeps over me when I have to deal with tech stuff.
I know only the basic functions of my iMac and dare not go beyond surfing the Internet and writing documents in case I press a wrong button and the machine dies.
Before he left, the man from Funan took me through the steps of installing the printer in the event it conks out on me (heaven forbid). He did it thrice but it didn't make a difference. I won't know how to set it up.
I recently bought my mother a TV set and I still have no idea how to work it, other than to switch it on, off and change channels.
Because it's widescreen, everyone on TV looks strangely fat and stumpy. A colleague told me that the set can be adjusted to a normal screen. But I dare not mess around with it. If the TV breaks down, I'll be inconvenienced as I'll have to get it repaired.
I've had my Apple iPod for more than a year and, until recently, have been transferring the songs from my CDs to it by trial and error. And don't ask me to create play-lists because that's beyond me.
In fact, even basic gadgets intimidate me.
At the moment, in my house, one lightbulb in the bathroom has blown, another light under the staircase is flickering because it's dying, and a third light in my sister's room is emitting a strange drone.
There's a man my mother hires to help us repair stuff like this but he's been busy and so we've been living with dead, flickering and noisy lights.
I'm sick of being so helpless.
Surely it's not rocket science changing a lightbulb or installing a printer or working the iPod? So why can't I do it? Why must I be at the mercy of others?
Perhaps two decades ago it was deemed kind of cute if you acted helpless around a gadget or proclaimed yourself confounded by tech stuff. No longer.
Technology is so much a part of our lives and there's no escaping machines. Besides, once you get the hang of them, they do make your life simpler, more productive and fun. You're just stupid to avoid them.
One reason for my incompetence is a fear of, well, electricity. I'm scared of anything connected to a power point because I've read too many stories of people being electrocuted, and as most machines must be hooked up, I'd rather avoid them if I can.
Another is a lack of exposure. I'm from a generation that didn't touch a computer until I went to work, and by the time the likes of digital cameras came onto the scene, I was an adult.
It's hard to teach old dogs new tricks, especially when they come with a language of their own. (Come on, do you really understand a sentence like this: 'The software can automatically scan through and analyse existing code bases - including Cobol, PL/I, RPG, Visual Basic, C/C++ and Java - to identify codes that can be reused and those that should be junked.')
I should also blame nature. I'm more a right-brain than left-brain person and things that require a more logical, sequential approach perplex me, and what I don't understand causes fear.
So what's a person like me to do?
I'm tired of being stupid and timid about machines. How I wish I was one of those who can blithely download TV programmes off the Net and work the bells and whistles on their digicam.
How can I learn to be more IT independent? Maybe I should sign up for courses. Perhaps it's a matter of just being braver in experimenting with the gadgets I have - and bracing myself to be inconvenienced should they go kaput.
Or, easier still, I should track down my tech-savvy friend, and get him to fix whatever tech woes I have.
This article was first published in The Straits Times on Sep 7, 2008.
