Of lost phones (thank God it’s not the electric shaver!)

Depending on who you are, this may be interesting news: today I lost my handphones (more on this later. It’s kind of embarrassing, the way I lost them). Yup, you got it right, I have two phones. You see, I have a personal phone (an IPhone 3GS) and a Blackberry. I was kind of upset to lose the IPhone for numerous reasons. The first one and most importantly is I have about 500 plus photos in it, mostly of me and the family. And of course because it is an IPhone. When I bought it, I signed a contract with Maxis for the instalment plan. I have to pay Maxis RM250 per month for 24 months. Can’t really recall how many months I have left on the plan but most definitely it’s less than 1 year. The only saving grace is Maxis will freeze the line for 3 months and not charge me anything during the said 3 months. The other thing is I have an unlimited data plan for my IPhone. What it means is I can use the phone as a modem and connect to the internet without any limit on usage whatsoever. And that I value.

At first, I wasn’t too perturbed about losing the IPhone. I’ve learned to accept that maybe my relationship with the phone has lived its course. So I’m OK with that. The thing is, when I got home, I realised that without the IPhone, I can only connect to the internet with the Celcom broadband modem (the USB thing) given to me by the office. The only issue I have with that is the Celcom broadband’s speed is bloody slow where I am. To be perfectly honest I am really upset at that. When I said the electric shaver was the greatest human invention I wasn’t kidding but right now I need my IPhone to connect to the internet. And I’m genuinely pissed right now.

You may have noticed that I don’t write that much about my Blackberry. Why you ask? The Blackberry is given to me by the office. You know, so I can access my e-mail on the go, things like that. I used to think that the Blackberry is akin to ball and chains. And I still do. You are always expected to answer that Blackberry whenever it rings. You are also expected to read all the e-mails the moment you receive them and where possible, reply. After all, it’s portable isn’t it? I’ve accepted that fact actually. As the person taking care of the company’s legal affairs, I’ve got to be contactable and always be on top of things. So at this time, the Blackberry is on the fringes of being a necessity for me (although it would never take the place of the electric shaver). After I lost it, the company replaced the Blackberry within a few hours. Which was super efficient. Sometimes, not being contactable is a good thing. It’s the only time when you actually taste the sweet nectar of true freedom. I had that taste for the few hours before the Blackberry was replaced.

Now, back to the story about how I lost the phones. This morning, while I was about to leave home for work, I realised that I may have lost my wallet. So I put the phones on my car (notice its ON the car and not IN the car. I think you know where this story is heading) and went back inside my house to look for it. The good thing was I found my wallet. The bad thing was I drove to work with the phones ON my car (and not IN the car). You’ve guessed it. There go the phones. I actually heard a thud as I was driving. Didn’t cross my mind for even a milisecond that that’s the sound of my phone (which one I don’t really know) hitting the car before falling on the road.

When I got to the office, I immediately noticed something was terribly wrong. Went back home to look for the phones but to no avail. I was resigned to the fact. A friend from the office asked me if I heard any sound of the phones falling/slipping off the car and that immediately reminded me of the earlier thud I heard. Went back to the place and my heart skipped a beat when I saw the black casing of the IPhone by the side of the road (wasn’t really bothered with the Blackberry to be perfectly honest).  What completely sucked was it was the casing of my IPhone alright. Casing only. Apparently somebody stumbled upon the IPhone, took it and conveniently decided to ditch the casing. Everybody, if you ever decide to steal somebody’s phone (which I hope you don’t), please have the decency to steal everything. Please do not leave the casing behind to add insult to injury.

The thing is, I believe losing the phones is a way of God asking me to be more careful. I have previously left my phones in a public restroom, left it in the office, left it at ATM machines and many other places and have managed to recover them all the time. Today my luck just ran out. And the manner of losing them just fans the fire. Well, things could be worse. I could’ve lost my electric shaver!