Monday, January 27, 2014

Phone-Wise, I Now Live In This Century

So as of Sunday, January 26 I have a new phone.  It is an iPhone 4, courtesy of my uncle from Hong Kong, who, unbeknownst to me, has a lot of money, because when he visited my folks and uncle in Germany, he brought them two iPhones, one for my Germany-living uncle, and one for Mother, who in turn gave it to me.

I've been reticent about getting a new phone for a long time.  I have a flip phone that serves all my needs nicely, and if it ain't broke, what needs fixing?  Father gave me an iPhone, but I didn't use it.  I told them it was because for some reason I couldn't receive calls.  That was a complete lie.  There were things wrong with it, most notably the time (it is the only device on which I can set an alarm; it's a small thing, but I have to reject it outright if it doesn't have that), but I could have used it.  Honestly, I was bothered by this hand-me-down.  I want my own phone, a virgin phone untouched by anyone except me.  And now I have it.  Sure, I didn't buy it, but from the introduction I saw when it was first turned on for me, it's like new.

That being said, I was kind of pushed into it.  Father told me about the new phone Saturday night.  Sunday morning I planned to put it in, but I didn't have a paper clip to open it, so I decided to just leave and work out for the day.  When I came home Mother got it open and told me to put my SIM card in it.  But, apparently the SIM card I have was too big for the iPhone slot.  I'm so out of the loop (and didn't care) that I have no idea why this is or if this even is true.  My SIM fit into Father's old iPhone just fine.  Father told me to go to the mall and have my card cut the next day.  I walked away instead; I figured I'll do it when I want to do it.

But after dinner, Mother orders me to bring her my SIM.  She got to the dining room table with a head lamp and a razor.  She was going to do some major surgery, that or cut lines of coke.  Either way I didn't care.  Short time later the iPhone 4 was working.

Everything was great ... until I tried to find my contacts.  None of them were there.  What the fuck?  Why aren't my contacts transferring into my new smart?  The guts of the SIM card are still there; I don't see why it won't.  None of the messages I've kept, including and especially the very first one, from T-Mobile greeting me the first day I signed up with them in 2002, are in the new phone, either.  If I had realized that this was going to happen when Mother trimmed my SIM, I would have told her to wait and I would have finally gotten around to doing what I thought of doing for a long time: Wrote down all my contacts in my day planner.

Wish I did that now.  But obviously it's too fucking late for that.  Sure, there's a way to "enlargen" your Micro SIM to "original" size, but I can see me not having the energy to do that shit.  Therefore, I should be pissed off at my parents for making me sacrifice an important part of my past as well as numbers that connect me very much to my present.  But I don't want to be unappreciative of this gift they (and my Hong Kong uncle) gave me.  Besides, it really was time I entered the 21st century.  Plus, the iPhone 4 looks pretty sweet.

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