My Cell Phone Chronicle: 1995-2012

Do you remember all the mobile handsets you have owned?  

I did a stock-taking of mine out of oddity and here's what I have been through...

 
1995-1997: Motorola CD920
My first ever cellular handset (dual band: GSM900/1800)


1997- 1998: Ericsson GH337
Ericsson was a hit, it was fashionable and everyone carried one.




1998-1999: StarTAC 75
The so-called "wearable phone" was the world's smallest and lightest then. It weighed just 88g & it was an envy amongst my peer.
 
1999-2000: StarTAC 130 Slim
As if 88g was not light enough.

 
2000-2002: Kyocera 200
When everyone chose the trendy Japanese manufacturers, I had eyes on the Korean bet. I liked it light, practical and different.

 
2002-2003: Siemens SL45
Bought it as soon as it came out in the market - a rather expensive choice back then but was the first MP3 phone with reasonable audio quality - Felt rather good carrying a trend setter. 


 
2003-2003: Nokia 6600
My first handset with a camera - though I said I didn't want to be Nokia slave then.

2003-2004: Nokia 6100
Surrendered to the slim, lightness and the all-rounded feature of this handset.

2004-2005: LG 8120
My first 3G handset that can make video calls.

2005-2006: Sony Ericsson K608i 
Sony + Ericsson = first time when style & practicality got married.

2006-2007: Nokia 6288
Boomerang to the Nokia camp as this phone was a bargain and honestly flawless after all.


2007- 2009: Sony Ericsson K810i
Totally impressed by its Cybershot 3.2M & its AF function.



 
2009-2009: Sony Ericsson W995
Classic slider technique, a mechanism that was strangely addictive when I had it in my palm.



2009-2010: Sony Ericsson Aino
The Aino has pretty much everything - plus a simple-but-snappy touch media menu.


 
2010-present: Apple iPhone 4
Finally - the Apple defiant has converted to iPhone in 2010 and this device has become the longest I have hung onto till this very day.
 

Can't help but wonder...what would be my next pick?

What You Focus On Expands

There is an old saying, “What you focus on expands."

Have you noticed when you buy a car or...a pair of sneakers, you start noticing people driving, wearing the same model as you?

The same theory applies when we stared at every tick of the clock, the minute would always appear much longer than we thought.  

That is because we are hypersensitive when we focus on the very one thing we care.  It's all good if the thing in focus is a positive thing. 

I observed some Facebook friends of mine who would consistently use the same sort of vocabulary in their status updates.  

"Awful, terrible, horrible, sad, angry, pity."  You get the picture. 

Their daily drama revolves around their rather negative judgment of people and events that are, in their evaluation - awful or/and terrible.  Needless to say, their existence would also turn out to be resentfully sad as a result of their self-pity talk and projection. 

What you focus on expands.  And negative energy flows where negativity goes.


Another fine example - let's just say you are a "weigh-a-holics" and you weigh yourself daily at the very least.  You would be stepping on and off that bathroom scale of yours each morning several times in a minute, wishfully thinking that a lower figure might magically appear between your feet.  I wouldn't necessarily say you are insane because I happen to know a few including myself who do that religiously.  

I realised though, the morning weighing exercise can either make my day, or most of the time, break my day.  Two pounds can easily be vanished after a night of dehydration and the same can be added on after you ate a cow in your last meal!  Then I told myself, why let that affect my mental and emotional state of my day? 

If you look good, feel good and are in good health, who cares about a stupid number anyway?  If you are not, I trust your wits should know fairly well what ought to be done too. 

Positive energy flows where positivity goes.

Stay focus - only on the positives. 

No Means Yes

Among my group of friends, there's this lady of leisure who is currently in between jobs and she has this place she always wanted to visit.  It just happened that none of the rest of us in the group had the time to travel with her and hence, she decided to travel solo for the very first time.  

The place she was destined to go, was India - the destination of her dream.  For the bunch of us who didn't go, we had a friendly little bet without her.   Knowing she adores India but doesn't always prefer to do things alone, we bet that she either absolutely loathed the place, or loved it.  Nothing in between. 

10 days later, our little friend came back.  She told us she learned a few things in India and just when she was about to solve our puzzling eyes, she gave us an Indian wiggle of the head. 

"Like many of their neighbouring Asians, the Indians prefer not to say no," said Lady of Leisure.

"Right.  So did you not like the country," we asked.


She did it again!  She managed a very loose wobble of the head from side to side on the neck, which left us completely perplexed.  

Did she mean yes, no or anything in between? 

Looks like there is only one way to find out if I have won my bet. 

I might be better off consulting Google instead! 

An App Too Many

While I was bed resting and when I had nothing better to do facing the ceiling, fiddling the iPhone has never been proved so - exhilarating. 

That was when I discovered there really is an app for nearly everything nowadays.   

Ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to share with you a few outright bizarre apps that I have hence discovered during boredom.

Straight To Voicemail (STV)

How many times have you prayed that the person you are calling are not going to pick up your call?  Why on earth would you dread that way?  Well, think along the line of making excuses for not seeing your parents, or in times when you call in sick and don't want to deal with your boss directly.  Not in any way suggesting I have done that or you should do that, but you get the idea. 

This app arrows your call straight into someone's voice mail machine.  I have no idea how on earth they do it, but for $1.99, you can still get to literally call someone but not needing to actually talk to someone.  I say, one can see where socialising is heading. 


HangTime

This one is pure idiotic.  It measures your air-borne time!  You can have a go at throwing your fancy iPhone in the air, for it can track the amount of time before it comes crashing down again.   This is just great isn't it?  Make sure you are a good catcher, or the app will cost $1.99 plus the cost of buying a new phone!

Search UK Pay Phones

When it comes to applications, iPhone has it all.  Want to find the nearest pizza takeaway or public water closets?  Bam - there's an app for that.  When you are actively using your iPhone one day and you just want to find out where your nearest payphone is when in U.K.?  Whoola - This is just what you need.   Absolutely hilarious.

I say we readily need a superseding app to help us deal with the overflowing apps in our phones.

Everyone's Internal Pharmacy

I woke up yesterday feeling really lousy, so I decided to just sit around in my bathrobe, didn’t brush, didn't shower, watched TV a little, and by mid-morning I felt much worse with pain here and there, totally lacking energy, so I virtually slept through the whole day. 

Today, I got up feeling under the weather again but decided I should find something more constructive to do while staying home. Off I went, groomed and changed, hooked up with my long lost computer to do some rusty blogging and by mid-morning I felt much better!

Why was this?
 

I think I have just discovered a perfect panacea of how attitude can affect us physically.

Once, everyone thought the reason you felt better was purely mental, but now I know that it’s also biochemical.

By engaging in behaviours of being well - showering, getting dressed and going out - I actually changed my body chemistry, which then brought myself to feeling a bit better.

It’s a combination of the power of the mind AND our internal pharmacy department that can make a stark difference to the well-being of our bodies.

I am so glad I have figured that one out nice and early and hoping to share my 2 cents here with you too.