CAIRO - Friends, Romans, countrymen… and people from the city as well… lend me your ears and I'll give them back to you after I finish. Don't worry; I am not going to sing. I do however have something very important to tell you and it is related to the lack of privacy we experience these days. I installed an application on my cell phone to block unwanted callers. It's called ‘True Caller' and you can download it for free from the official site of the Finnish phone manufacturing company. So far this sounds normal… but it turned out not to be. I later met a musician on a music online site. After chatting for a while we thought we'd meet. He gave me his number and I thought it would be easier to ring him instead of writing down my number and sending it to him. Once I rang him, his name appeared on my phone's screen before I even saved it to the phonebook! I couldn't understand it at all. I told him about it and he was really surprised as well. The same thing happened later when I was calling the doctor, whose number wasn't saved on my phone and also as I was dialling a hospital's number I got from the Internet! So far this has happened three times and I know it has nothing to do with the cell phone service providers, because the hospital's number is a landline one. The application says it accesses info on Facebook and Twitter, but the guitarist said his number was not added to the personal info on his profile! I still don't know how this application works but I thought I'd warn you. Now Facebook asks to provide our phone numbers to be able to access this social network via mobiles. Gmail asks us to send our numbers so that the administrators can contact us in case something happens to the email account. We can easily be located if we turn our GPS on. Of course, Bluetooth is another way of knowing if we are in the area. There are other applications that ask us to share our location with friends and it's a long list. A while ago I was really surprised that Facebook had links that connect people together, like a family tree to see who is related and so on. I understand that some people make groups and pages dedicated to their old schools or to stay in touch with each other and of course in that case everyone will know who went to school with whom… but family members is a bit too much. I also don't know why some people display their phone number and email address on their profile. I really feel as if I'm being examined under a microscope and that some people might watch every little move I make whenever they want to. Although I'm not doing anything that could be held against me, this is still not a comfortable feeling at all. These days I always feel like somebody's watching me… Mmmm… why does this sound familiar? Maybe because it is a bar from Rockwell's hit “Somebody's Watching Me”. Which brings us to the second question in the same paragraph – Who sang that particular bar? It was someone called Michael Jackson! Question three: Why would the King of Pop sing a few words on a track made by a newcomer? Simply because Rockwell is the son of Berry Gordy, who is the founder of Motown record company – the same company that discovered Michael and his brothers when they first started as the Jackson 5. Daryl Hall and John Oates is the name of an American duo that was hugely successful in the 1970s and the following decade. However, the two guys felt somehow insecure and it seems that the only thing that made them calm down was hiring ‘Private Eyes'. Wasn't that also the title of a Hall & Oates smash hit? British pop singer David Grant got his lady all confused. It is OK to watch someone, but I'm sure she didn't get it when he said ‘Watching You Watching Me'. Now I've got it… she was watching him and little did she know that he noticed and was watching her as she was watching him. I take back the “she didn't get it part” and instead I'll put “she must have been so embarrassed”. Have you seen the new movie ‘The Adventures of Tintin'? If you are a Tintin fan then you must be familiar with the Thomson Twins or is it the Thompson Twins? One of them has a ‘p' in his name and the other doesn't. Well, a British pop trio chose to be called the Thompson Twins and had a very interesting job, especially for three people – they introduced themselves saying ‘We Are Detective'! Maybe it was an indication of how the three of them were as close as one! Another British band is the legendary rock group Dire Straits, which must have been named after what many people all over the world are going through now. Anyway, although music made these guys very rich, they had another job which was a ‘Private Investigations' business. They explained “it's a mystery to me, the game commences, for the usual fee, plus expenses”. Apparently, private investigators make more money than rock stars. It seems we are still talking about British legendary bands and the next one is the Police. Like or hate the name, this trio, lead by a genius called Sting, achieved enormous success with several songs and albums, including ‘Synchronicity', which featured the scary track ‘Every Breath You Take.' Yes, I think it's scary when someone says “every breath you take, with every move you make, every bond you break, every step you take I'll be watching you”. So, every little thing she does is watched. No-one can say she hasn't been warned! There's nowhere to run or hide so I think I better go and buy myself outfits, wigs and masks as a disguise. I'll remember to switch my cell phone off as well. Send me your tracking devices to: [email protected]
