in my delay to get a new phone (tomorrow, tomorrow!) i’ve had to hijack my mum’s instead, reasoning my selfishness away by figuring that she hardly uses it anyway, her miniscule phonebook plain testament to my clear precedence over her need to use it.

well, i did complain about it at the start, since it’s one of those ancient nokia phones (my mum, always at the bottom of the list of priority users typically inherits our old phones whenever we upgrade). as you can see, its screen is monochrome. it lights up in that harsh, flourescent HELLO I HAVE LIGHTS sort of way. my thumb is completely sore from the stiff, rubbery buttons you have to sort of nail to input stuff. it uses the old nokia OS that i used to be familiar with back in secondary school and JC (think: 1999 - 2001 period). i was surprised to see it even had the dictionary function for texting. and of course, a camera is way out of the question.

strangely though, i’ve found i’ve been more productive with this than my new(er) fangled type ones — the ones with the bells and whistles: cameras, calendars, notebooks, e-wallets, memory cards, 1000 levels of archiving text messages… you’d think all those things were there to increase productivity.

but i find that the ancient phone is removing my dependence on a phone as a security blanket. i’m shaking the habit of compulsively snapping every damned insignificant thing in front of me. or to jot inconsequential (and often difficult-to-jot) stuff in the notebook. or to compulsively check the 1000-levelled hierarchy of archived junk. i’ve stopped being able to send or receive MMS messages so that’s been a huge time saver.

does anyone remember the old ericsson ones? before they became sony ericsson. the black ones with the little antenna and the metal bar running through the side of the phone’s body. i saw a jackie chan film where he used that to bash a guy to death. those were serious weapons, i tell you.

strangely, it’s these phones which seem to last all the way. i’ve broken three then-hightech clamshell phones (one upper shell literally flew off when i opened it), I’ve ruined two others with a little water and had another literally crash because of OS problems. with these old phones you know they aren’t going to break down.

not even if you bludgeon someone to death with them.