This is an article rescued from the old version of CraicOn.

Round the World

My sister said to me recently “I remember when you brought us up a ZX81 computer from London you told Mum that ‘one day you’ll be able to order your shopping through one of these. You won’t have to go to the shops at all’ “.

The ZX81 was the earliest mass market PC but it was like a toy compared with the PCs now.

I didn’t actually remember saying that.

However, it’s all come to pass and more.

Dress Ordered

My daughter is in America at the moment, enjoying the weather and the swimming pool at her grandparents place in New England, but will be back for Moville Community College’s formal next week.

She ordered her dress for it through the internet (well she picked it out and I ordered and paid for it).

It turned out that it would be made in Mumbai (Bombay).

Not only that, it wasn’t an off-the-peg dress but it was to be made to order by their local designer after they got a load of info from her on her various sizes and shape.

Tracking

They kept us up to date on a daily basis on how it was going.

After it was made we were able to track its progress through the DHL website.

The dress was sent from Mumbai to New Delhi.

The next day it was sent from New Delhi to Leipzig in Germany.

Oh! Oh!

Was something going wrong?

USA

Not a bit of it.

It was sent, we were able to follow, later that day to Cincinnati in the USA.

This morning we read that had now arrived in Boston.

We weren’t expecting it till Friday, however, we read that it had been picked up in Boston and I even saw that there had been an attempt to deliver it but there was no one home (they had all been out).

I think that dress is perhaps already been to more places than some people I know.

I was even summarising here as there have been 17 different change in the status of the dress in its travels.

Mumbai

It’s amazing how you can not only buy a dress online but you can have it made to order by a fashion designer in Mumbai half a world away, with you choosing the material, and then you can follow it as it makes its way half way across the world.

As it was made to order hopefully it won’t need any changes to it but there is still just time if it does need an alteration as they don’t leave the US till Monday.

Amazing

It’s amazing the changes in the world since I first presented them with a ZX81.

And Bill Gates says that the world will change as much in the next 5 years as it has in the last hundred.

God knows what it will be like when my children’s children are grown up.

And, as regards the dress, hopefully it will be all worthwhile at the formal.

Luckily my daughter doesn’t read CraicOn so she’ll never know I shared this with you.