Mobile Phones - Rant #3 (Part 1)

Sahl Hasheesh - My Local Ice Cream Shop

Right, I’m back to my favourite topic. The Evil Known As Mobile Phones.

I thought I was well organised for my trip to Europe. I managed to find the UK sim card that I’d bought last time and I remembered to take my smart phone with me. So far, so good.

The first time I needed to use it was when visiting Rajashree in Basel. The plan was for me to get to a specified tram stop, phone her (yes, I knew that was where it would all go horribly wrong!), and she would pick me up from there.

However, when I arrived at the tram stop, I dialled the number, but nothing happened. I wondered if I’d misremembered the code for Switzerland (I was using my Egyptian sim), so I asked a very nice gentleman who was working in his garden who confirmed it for me. In the end I gave up trying to phone and just asked him if he knew the street where Rajashree lived. He did. See, you don’t really need mobile phones at all.

Rajashree seemed to think I needed a Swiss sim as well and I thought that maybe it wasn’t a bad idea. I could pretend to be a jet-setting mobile proficienado. Well, I can dream.

Back in Zurich, I went to a phone shop (did I really spend part of my holiday in a phone shop??). I knew myself well enough to ask the guy to put the sim in my phone for me. There’s no point in inviting trouble. To my great joy, or was it consternation – my emotions were mixed – he couldn’t do it. Just think if it had been me trying to perform the task! He went to a colleague and came back to inform me that my mobile phone was broken and wouldn’t accept sim cards. True enough, I could see the bits hanging down that he was talking about.

This was all in German, so it was a bit of a strain. Anyway, I pointed out that it was working perfectly well beforehand with my old sim and I asked him to put the old sim card back in, which he did, claiming that my phone wouldn’t accept any other sim. It’s all beyond me and I didn’t know what to think. I let him sell me a cheap, basic (phew!) Nokia instead, with sim inserted. I came out of the shop wondering if this whole Swiss sim card idea was really such a good plan after all.

At Hye-Youn’s, my smart phone started to malfunction. Maybe it didn’t like Switzerland. Anyway, it kept on saying (it has done this many times previously as well) that the sim card was not inserted and it wouldn’t show the correct time and I couldn’t use it as an alarm clock or as a camera. I’ve had it less than a year. It had become a stupid phone, or maybe just plain dead. Perhaps it was protesting at having an owner that hated it so much (and now I feel guilty). I left it at Hye-Youn’s by mistake on departing Switzerand. I’m sure psychologists would have a field day.