Dott SG: Romancing the fone

I finally did it - changed my handfone.

The ole Nokia clamshell had served me well these two years but it, like the owner, was showing obvious signs of age. Its battery like mine, wasn’t holding the charge like it used to and the headphone connection was getting increasingly cranky much like The Other Half (but that’s a whole other story).

So I went to a Starhub shop in Toa Payoh for a look-see and to my eternal surprise, found a salesman who actually spoke English not some techno-phone (where-the-fuck-have-you-been-all-these-years) babble.

Ended up getting the Samsung Omnia i900. It looked a little like the legendary iphone that just about everyone and his mother seems to own and rave about. The iphone - while I’m sure is a good piece of equipment, never held my interest. I was never keen on being part of the in-crowd anyway and I sure wasn’t about to start now.

The Omnia had some pretty good reviews and I felt that I should take a break from Nokia. To me a phone is just a phone not an essential body part that I can’t do without. Still, I guess it was time to move on, learn new things and find out what the fuss is all about…

I ported the number over from M1 to Starhub a process which proved to be a surprisingly painless. I had three SMS updates on how the process was going. It was reassuring.

The courtship hasn’t been as blissful as I would have liked. Olivia as she has been christened, feels like a seasoned girlfriend and I for once, was left feelin’ like a virgin (that’s another story too).

It didn’t help that the damn fone doesn’t come with a user’s manual or better still a Dummy’s Guide (but then again, neither do women). I did find one online guide (for the phone lah). Pity it was in Chinese. It might have well been in Russian for all the help it was worth.

So I did it the old-fashioned way - poking around her to see what worked. Let’s just say Olivia wasn’t too pleased with all that fumbling, groping and pressing the wrong buttons (I took a great close-up picture of my big toe) must have sent her mixed signals on our first date last night.

The headfones it came with blew me away. It’s got this off-centre nipple-like thingy which I guess you ram it deep into the ear canal until it starts to bleed or you hear something. Tried that - nope - didn’t quite work. The damn things kept falling out. Shit! this is gonna be embarrassing …

It shouldn’t be this hard. I assume ears have not evolved all that much but then again I know of one little thing who has these cute button-like ears similar to that of a penguin … Maybe these things ain’t built for the 30s and beyond generation. It was time to put Oli to sleep and give her a break.

Still she forgave me and woke me up bight and early with a new message. I had wanted my first real communication to be with someone special but then the boss must SMS me just to say that he was sick … damn it … how to make special memories like this.

Olivia still has lots of secrets to be uncovered and maybe if I’m nice, she’ll clue me in as to what buttons to press. I’m confident our dates will go better and we’ll get alone fine.

But I still can’t figure out the freakin’ headfones!