I started this blog just after Thanksgiving but I never finished and Christmas is only days away. And yeah, I'm still paying for eating my customary two dinners-weekend. Yeah, I am one of the fortunate ones. But see, I had dinner with a lot of folks not of the iPod or iPhone generation and they're frankly not used to kids taking out their cameras to take quick photos or videos or tweet or update their Facebook status on what kind of gravy they were having.
So when there was interesting conversations, I was pretty engaged. Two weeks ago, I met a new friend from a family acquaintance who works at Facebook. That was interesting. But when the conversation ended up being about politics in the old country, I got bored rather quickly.
I was tempted to pull out my iPod touch and play with my games. That was before I got my iSpot. Now, I am fully capable of surfing the Internet for intervals of four-hours (the life of the battery).
Still, more options for my mobile device does not make it okay to use during dinner and gatherings. So what is the proper etiquette?
Last Thursday, I went on a late dinner-and-snack run with some college and Internet friends. The last one of the year. There were ten of us. I was the only one with the iPod touch while everyone else had an iPhone. One other did not.
Everyone, except the one who had a regular LG flip phone, was constantly checking Yelp, checking into Places and Foursquare, and looking up the latest sports score. I guess in that setting, it was okay.
But dinner with aunts, uncles, and grandparents who you rarely see probably isn't the place to be seeing what your friends are doing on Facebook or what Twitter is feeding you.
So, we've got Christmas and New Year left. I'm guess Christmas will be spent with families while New Year with the iPhone crowd. Pick wisely. You only have to see some folks a few times a year and it might be wise to spend it, for better or worse, focused on them.
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