Eric Demay

Yo kids, I’m in Amsterdam for the week and it’s cold and cloudy. This is a funnier story though.

On the flight in, I spent eight hours next to an old Indian lady. She spoke only hindi (and I’m also guessing she only read it too) and was desperately trying to figure out Lufthansa’s Media World interface on the small LCD screen in front of her.

She pressed buttons and chose menus without understanding what they were for, on and on and on and on. I felt her pain—or so I thought: the interface had no icons whatsoever and had shady non words like “WatchEnjoy” or “ListenRelax” depending on the media type, so I tried to help.

I asked if she needed help with anything, hinted to the great indian movie that was available (Peepli Live, in hindi to boot), or that when choosing a radio station, it would also probably be more interesting to put on the headphones. She only grunted, waved me off and kept poking at the screen. And so, for literally hours on end, my neighbour was a monkey with a typewriter not writing Hamlet.

The rule of thumb seemed to be “Ignore UI feedback on screen. Always.” She was pressing images that weren’t buttons, pressing buttons that weren’t toggled, to italian to portuguese to dutch (hindi wasn’t among the 14 language choices), opening the brightness and playback control compulsively and arbitrarily, restarting the film clips over again, and again, and again. It was exhausting just sitting there ignoring her. I watched the opening credits to Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole from the corner of my eye about 20 times in a row. Oh they’re fantastic.

She eventually passed out after supper, her forehead resting on the screen like a tired branch. Carefully, I turned the screen off.

She slept for an hour or so… and before I knew it, she was hopelessly back to her aimless screen poking.