How I spent the day, Steve Jobs died –true story (simple iphone owner)

by Sandani Samarajeewa (Chemistry, Texas A&M University)

Woke up to the alarm from the iphone, checked personal mail and work mail, deleted all the spam, realized that my manuscript got rejected (sad day) and replied to a few emails while in bed

Checked facebook on the iphone while brushing my teeth to catch up with whatever happened overnight--new-borns, newly-weds, graduations, birthdays, laughter, tears, frozen Canadian Rockies, romantic Rome and Paris, tropical heavens Maldives and Sri Lanka…literally a world-tour

Checked on the calorie content of a left-over slice of cheese pizza vs. banana milk shake on the iphone to decide on what to have for breakfast

Had breakfast while checking on cricket highlights and a bit of world news on the iphone

Drove to Macys to return a dress, checked the prices of clothes that were 70% off of already 50% reduced price (the second reduction always throws me off) by scanning the labels with the iphone

Drove to work, parked on lot 50 and during my 10 min walk to the chemistry building (for those who don’t know me, I walk insanely slow), had a conference call between my mother (in Canada) and father (in Cambodia) on Skype, while having my brother (in Florida) on hold, heard my 5 year old nephew speak broken Sinhala on the background, showed a live video of an over-excited squirrel doing vertical spins (trying to eat its own tail rather) through Skype on the iphone

Got to work, calculated molar masses and concentrations for a reaction through the iphone while setting up a reaction, ran NMR and while collecting the spectra, determined unidentifiable peaks on the spectrum by checking the NMR solvent peaks chart on the iphone, timed a prep process with the iphone

Learned from a colleague that my boss’s reception honoring her distinguished professorship was at 5 pm, decided to return home to dress up, took a picture of the invitation from the iphone (instead of scribbling down the venue and time of the reception on a piece of paper) and let another colleague take a picture from his iphone of the invitation-picture on my iphone while running down the hall-way (how cool is that?)

Got home, dressed up, while driving to the reception, checked on the closest garage parking from the iphone

Got to the reception, ate good food, had a glass of wine, took a picture of the mouthwatering dessert display, got bored and entertained myself with a few minutes of angry bird

During the award presentation, learned that one of the physics distinguished professorship awardees was a Nobel Prize winner in chemistry (surprised) and checked out his inventions from the iphone before shaking hands with the laureate

Got home to learn (through his own invention) that Steve Jobs had passed away (shocked), texted the horrible news to a few friends, mourned

Went for a run while listening to Pandora on the iphone, calculated the distance and total calories burned through the iphone

Too lazy to switch on the laptop, so watched an episode of mad men on Netflix (still on the iphone), played some sad music on the piano with the metronome set from the iphone

Went to a friend’s place for dinner and scrabble, checked the meaning and existence of over 100 words on the iphone during scrabble, mourned about the death of Steve Jobs

Got home, plugged in my iphone to charge, checked mail, checked facebook, set the alarm, switched on the sleep app (weirdly…the sound of rain helps) and went to sleep (mourning of course…)

Moral of the story: This legendary inventor has touched the lives of the ordinary in an inexpressible manner. I’m a simple graduate student (quite technologically challenged to be honest), who survives on a generous graduate student stipend, 10000 miles away from home. Steve Jobs has brought the entire world and everything that matters to me into my pocket. Now think of the 129 million iphone users who follow a similar routine every single day—I’m truly honored to have lived in the i-generation of Steve Jobs—your legacy will forever remain.