Psychic GPS

I haven't talked much about the tech I am using on this trip except to vent my spleen at Mobicity for their fairly ordinary efforts in delivering my phone (btw I got a refund). I picked up another HTC One X in Penrith on the way to the Blue Mountains and have been learning its capabilities on the fly. Two of the best features it has is the Navigation App from Google and the integrated mp3 player. What's truly psychic about this is just how integrated it is.

Now the GPS talks to me, which is nice now that its just me, this blog and the road. It has a stern American female voice, imagine taking your stay at home aunt, who is a bit of a know it all and basically the fun police, and putting her in charge of giving you directions to places that neither of you have never been. She has to sound like she's in charge, she can't sound exasperated and she doesn't know how to pronounce place names (you should hear her say Kosciuszko). I have given her a name, Martha. It had to be a no nonsense name, like an old school teacher or even worse librarian. She is a stranger in a strange land but she is trying to deal with as best she can. Plus she's psychic.

Now when Martha doesn't have things to tell me she lets me play mp3 files through the Bluetooth audio sync with the car sound system, she then butts in whenever she needs too. What's a little creepy is her song selection. I first noticed it when I was entering Jindabyne, up came the old Midnight Oil song from Red Sails in the Sunset, "Kosciuszko". I smiled quietly too myself at the luck of that. I have about 1,600 tunes in Martha's memory so it wasn't too big a stretch to think it just a bit lucky.

On leaving Jindabyne that's when it started getting weird. I was about to hit the 100 km zone of the Snowy Mountains Highway when on came Elvis Costello singing "Watching the Detectives", just then two highway patrol cars sped past me. I'm starting to laugh out loud at the irony and then it hit me, Martha is psychic. I kept a very careful ear on her song selection from that point on. Next freaky thing was a small grape growing district I was travelling through and up popped Cold Chisel singing "Cheap Wine". Now I'm starting to hear the Twilight Zone theme music in my head. 

I'm thinking this could be great, if I get to drive across the Nullarboor and Alan Parson starts singing "Eye in the Sky" I KNOW there will be one of those helicopter speed guns somewhere above my head and can slow down. I'm going to be really nice to Martha from now on though. I am positively freaking out about what she will play when I board the Spirit for Tasmania soon. If Flash in the Pan start singing "Down Among the Dead Men" (about the sinking of the titanic) I'll be wearing life vest for the entire trip.