HANG PHONE

I was without handphone for a few days last week. I sold my phone to a taxi driver. Yes.

It was a cheapo Nokia 6060 – a basic phone without camera or MP3 or Bluetooth or videocam or toaster. It could make calls and smses though.

It was considerably almost brand new still, only a couple of months old. I sold it because I hated it.

How could I not hate the phone? Two days after I bought the phone, the flip went loose. I wouldn’t mind it so much if it weren’t for it rejecting incoming calls – because of the loose flip you see. Contrary to popular belief, I do get important calls too. Like calls from my neighbour offering me some odorless belachan fresh from Sabah (what is belachan without the odor?) or the call from my tailor wanting to know where I would prefer the pleats of my kain baju kurung to be, left or right (difficult question this one) or the most important one, from Yamtuan telling me about the kayu drivers hogging his way or the stooooopid traffic jam at-this-hour-can-you-bloomin-believe-it (I don’t drive so I couldn’t quite relate to traffic jam issues). I am an important person, this I insist. I need to be in-touch with the world. Communication is key. Technology is all that matters. One NEEDS handphone. Your world stops revolving if you can’t be reached. Must have. Necessity. As important as food, sleep and lipsticks.

And so I went back to see the guy at OUG plaza.

He insisted that it must be me. Being the ogre that I was – not exactly delicate – I must have either dropped the phone or over-bend it or something. He swore he had never seen a new phone so damaged so quick, the poor phone must have been severely abused and mishandled. What did you do to it? Unbelievable! It was unforgivable and cruel and no ma’am, we cant do anything. No-no.

Go repair, I said.
Irreparable, he said.
The only way to fix it is by changing the casing, but since the model is so new, NOKIA doesn’t have the spares out yet and a new casing would cost more than 200 (and he didn’t mean 200 rupees), he said.
Okay, trade in, I said.
But the phone is damaged, if I buy back from you I wont be able to sell back, he argued intelligently.
He said. I said. He said. I said. He said. I said.
In the end, he offered to give me RM150 for it out of charity and obligation. And I had to say no, because the phone was so very new.

And so I lived with the stooooopid phone for about two months. I tried asking other shops, they all said the same thing. Irreparable damage, would be too costly to repair. The only difference is that they wouldn’t take the phone, even if I pay them to.
Sad.

And then, suddenly this taxi driver offered to buy the phone from me even after I told him of its sad history and bleak future. He insisted that he must have the phone. He offered RM50 extra than what the guy at OUG would pay me. RM200 is not bad at all for a worthless phone. I showed him the problem and he still said he wanted it. I gave him my phone number and asked him to sleep on it. And for two weeks he kept sms-ing me saying please don’t sell the phone to anyone else lah, he’s ready with the money lah, all sort of almost pleading smses. It made me wonder, what possibly could he know about the phone that I didn’t know. Why? And I wondered.

And so we made appointments to meet. He gave me RM200 and I gave him the phone. One side jual, one side beli. Akad jual beli complete. Either I am a super-salesman or he’s on to something. Never mind. The phone has changed hands! Yey! The black that marred my life is removed!

And so I was without handphone. I figured, I have spent almost my entire life without handphone and I did not bad on my own. I decided I wanted to go au naturel again, devoid of technology. Konon, you said. Konon, I said too.

I am proud to say that I survived unhurt without handphone for 4 days!!!