OMG, it’s been a week since my last post….forgive me father. But I’ve been immersed in pigs. You read it right, pigs. I’ve been on a veterinary pharma project in Northern Ontario, interviewing vets and large pig producers on the direction and challenges of the pork industry in Canada. Man, I love my job; one day you’re speaking with KOL (Key Opinion Leading) HIV specialists about leading edge developments in HIV therapy, and the next you’re on a hog farm in the middle of nowhere (no offense intended, actually a lot of these “nowhere” places are very cool), figuring out the shifting dynamics of antibiotic vs. vaccine use in pigs.
Anyway, on one such day, I had finished an interview on a large farm situated in a sea of large farms with their now empty Winter-tilled soils. It was 1 PM and my next interview wasn’t until 2:30. I had passed a series of small “villages” on the way (a general store, gas station, and post office plus 20-30 houses), but there hadn’t been a single restaurant, not even a truck-stop or Tim Ho’s, in any of them. In every direction that I looked, all I saw was empty space punctuated by the occasional mega pork farms and their surprisingly ritzy-looking homes. I was hungry (in fairness, I’m always hungry, but this time I was really hungry). What to do?
Then it struck me. Maybe Siri could help. I’ve used Siri before for silly shit like asking “her” to look up articles about Kopi Luwak coffee (the beans are first eaten by civet cats and then the undigested beans are collected from their excrement, washed and sold to make the world’s most expensive coffee). But I had dismissed Siri as a relatively useless gimmick.
I held down the button on my iPhone 5 and Siri promptly came on. “Siri, find restaurants nearby”, I asked. Within 3 seconds, Siri had automatically located me on my GPS coordinates and responded, “There are three restaurants close to you”. Not only did Siri provide the names and distances, but driving directions directly inputed into my Apple maps program, as well as descriptions of the types of food.
I chose the closest restaurant, a “chop-house” located in a village about 7 km away. It took me 10 minutes to get there via a complex series of dirt back-roads, but lo and behold there it was….and it was damned good! I had a locally sourced turkey burger with local potatoes (French fries) made from scratch. Delicious!
I don’t give a damn what anybody says about the evils of modern technology. I love this stuff! 10 years ago, I would have had trouble even finding the farms and would have cooled my heels in my car, probably eating some sandwich I would have had to pack for the trip.