My Friend The GPS

For women, the Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver may as well be a Girl Power System. Now we can buy a sense of direction! Woot!

By Melanie Lee

I am hopeless with directions and the whole concept of getting one’s bearings has alluded me for most of my driving life. A friend (male, might I add, before this gets sexist) with a similar affliction suggested getting a GPS, a navigation device that uses satellite technology to pinpoint directions for you.

A little query posed on Facebook on which brand of GPS I should purchase alluded a flurry of responses, indicating that quite a lot of my friends already had GPS receivers in their cars. Based on their feedback, I decided to get the Garmin Nuvi 255W because it sounded liked the easiest to use.

Before this purchase, my husband had been my long-suffering manual GPS. Every time I had to go somewhere unfamiliar, he would churn out pages of handwritten directions the night before, of which I would memorize to heart. Obviously, this was a less-than-perfect arrangement. Case in point: we got lost while going to the Eastgear shop to pick up the GPS.

I have only been with my GPS for a week and am still adjusting to its presence in my car. For one, I still get a startle every time the female robotic voice alerts me to a red light or speed camera with this seeming sense of urgency. I’m not sure how this bodes for my nerves, but this could save me a traffic fine or two. I’m also feeling a little conflicted about the directions that my GPS gives me to places that I do know how to go to, which are often a different route from what I know. However, it has been quite flexible in this aspect and during the few times I have stubbornly stuck to my old “internal” directions, my GPS managed to recalibrate its directions to suit my preferences.

This slick technology is a vast improvement from a few years ago, when I took a cab with GPS in Australia, and when the driver decided to take a shortcut, it kept blaring, “Wrong direction! Wrong direction!” for a good 15 minutes until he muttered several expletives and switched the whole thing off.

Overall, I am pretty excited about having a GPS in my life. It’s kind of like having a driving instructor by your side, except it doesn’t smell or yell. Instead, my GPS efficiently churns out directions to unfamiliar terrain in a matter of seconds, and patiently guides me along my journey. This could be the start of a beautiful friendship.

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