I CAN SEE MY CAR FROM SPACE
March 21 Tuesday 2006

I really need a break. Unfortunately, I don’t see one coming in the near future, at least not until I finish my course, which is the reason why I need a break so badly to begin with.

If you’ve ever seen the movie Collateral, you’ll know that Max (Jaime Foxx) is in a similar position. He wants to get away, but he can’t and that’s why he keeps a postcard of an exotic island within easy reach. Whenever he needs to “get-away” he simply pulls it out and looks at it... if only for a few precious moments.

Thanks to the wonders of modern technology and Google Earth, I’ve recently found myself visiting the likes of the Great Pyramids in Giza, the beautiful reefs off the coast of Australia and the breath-taking plains of the Serengeti, all from the safety (and confines) of my apartment.

For the uninitiated, Google Earth is a free program for PC & Mac that uses satellite imagery to put a planet’s worth of graphical information at your finger-tips. I find it mildly amusing that even with the entire world at my disposal, my first port of call was my old house in the UK. I guess there’s something to be said about comfort in familiarity.

The beauty of this program is that it feels so real. The fact that you can zoom in, glide and pan around with complete freedom. Of course it is pretty scary to imagine how little privacy we have left… but I guess that’s what makes using Google Earth so exciting. I can see my car from space - how cool is that?