We live in a world where not owning a smart phone leaves you behind the rest of society. It’s really sad that we rely so heavily on our phones. The modern day cell phone serves a variety of purposes. Whether you’re bored and looking for a little entertainment or wanting to access social networks to share your awesome photos from the night before, modern mobile applications have endless possibilities that will allow you to do the tasks you want. As if I didn’t spend enough time on my phone in London already, living in America has opened my eyes to apps that I cannot live without!

Communicating With Home

As you can imagine, international dialing can be very expensive. For the first two years I was here, I had an international plan on my phone that allowed me to call and text home for free. Well, I say free, but my plan was costing me $70 a month!!! I finally banged my head together, cancelled it, and discovered Viber! Wow. I’m now calling and messaging all day, everyday … and it’s actually FREE! I sometimes have some connectivity problems since it works at its best with wifi, but when it’s saving me so much $$$, I can’t really complain. The only downside is you can only call other smartphones that have the app as well, so I don’t speak to my grandparents as often as I did before. I wish I discovered it sooner nevertheless; I’d be $1680 richer!

Money Money Money

Tipping still confuses me. We do tip in England, but we don’t HAVE too, so it still blows my mind. I understand that a lot of waiters and waitresses earn their living off of tips and that’s fine, but why do I have to tip the lady in the bathroom who handed me a tissue to wipe my hands? And I never know how much to tip. I know for most places it’s 15%, but I still struggle with it. As a result, Tip Calculator has become one of my most used apps. You type in the amount of the bill, how many people in your party, what percentage you want to leave as a tip, and the rest is history. Another app I love is the XE Currency Converter. I always want to know how much money I am spending in GBP. This app updates the exchange rate every minute, so as soon as the rate goes up or down I know––now I know when I’m getting ripped off!

Kill Your Hunger

Some of my best experiences here have been around a dinner table. Although the food here is no drastic culture shock to me (minus the sizes of the plates), Urbanspoon has been amazing for finding new things. Just type in your city, zip code, the type of food you fancy eating, and hit go for hundreds of great food places in the area, some that you never would have found on your own!

So, thanks to my iPhone, my stay in Austin has become much easier. Technology these days!