'Searching ...' a message on my mobile phone screen assures me. After an eternity my mobile lamely gives up, proving the proverb 'Seek and ye shall find' doesn't necessarily apply. 'No network found,' it says.
Stupid phone. I could have told it to forgo its quest since, here on holiday in Patong, I haven't activated global roaming because a) I'm too tight to pay the fee and b) not receiving calls, texts and voicemails feels like a blessing. If I relent and cough up, I will be tethered to an 'e-leash' - the invisible new economy chain that binds workers to their business associates and efficiency-fixated bosses wherever they are in the world.
The horror of e-leash culture hit home the other night when a salesman friend told me he had passed up the offer of a free business BlackBerry. Explaining why, he mimed staring at an imaginary screen just above his two frantically twiddling thumbs.
The B-word, as in 'BlackBerry on the beach', has become a byword for the e-leash and the sense of captivity that total connectedness implies. But a host of other gadgets and programs that make it hard to escape deserve the rap too. If you leave it on all the time, Skype, for instance, can make you dreadfully accessible.
As a result, we are arriving at the point where we are all on-call. You can't truly say you're off-duty when, slap in the middle of your holiday, a business e-mail or remote-access voice mail demands you chase up information on some niggling project. Gritting your teeth, you make excuses for walking away from your friends, who feel sorry for you until their turn comes.
It always does. A beleaguered tech-giant drone I know recently researched an article on 'work-life balance' only to discover it was a contradiction in terms. 'Nobody has it,' he said.