LOW BATT - those two words are the bane of all tech lovers.
In the age of space flight, nuclear fission and nanotechnology, no one has yet been able to invent a battery that will just go on and on and on. Instead, our talk-time on cellphones is limited to a few hours, and playing Bejewelled on an iPod Touch will make the battery strength disappear faster than lobsters at a buffet.
How many times have we run out of battery just when that perfect picture was there for the taking? And how often have we gone around the office begging for a charger because the battery in our cellphone was flat?
I was once cycling around Rottnest Island - one of those back-to-nature spots - in Australia, and the views of the ocean were stunning. Fishing out my digital camera, which used normal AA batteries, I was ready to snap a gorgeous picture of crashing waves from atop a cliff, but then the dreaded words showed up: LOW BATT. There was no shop in sight, and the visitors' centre was more than two hours away by bicycle. And guess who forgot to bring spare batteries.
I also take my portable DVD player to the gym so I can watch dramas and distract my mind from the pain and monotony of pounding away on a treadmill. I have lost count of the times I have forgotten to charge the player the night before, and then face the dreaded words LOW BATT as I am sweating and struggling to make it to 45 minutes on the treadmill.
Needless to say, the exercising stops when the battery does.
My Dustbuster handheld vacuum does not last more than 10 minutes on a full charge, the cordless phone has often cut-off when my wife is on her marathon sessions with her best friend and I have had to stop work because my laptop battery could not keep up with me.
A pastor told this joke about how when he had asked a youth to read the Bible out loud at a meeting, he was told: "Cannot pastor. LOW BATT."
As our lives become more enmeshed with technology and gadgets rule our days, I wish tech companies would forget about developing the next challenger to blu-ray or a new camera that packs more megapixels, and instead go back to the heart of all gadgets - its power source.
Just imagine what a super battery - which of course should be smaller than the size of a car - can do for our gadget-loving society. Anyone willing to take this project up, please, please, please?