I lost my cell phone last weekend. During a holiday in Puerto Galera, I found myself in a situation where I had to ride at the back of the driver of a tricycle, and my phone just fell out of my pocket during the ride from White Beach to the pier. We tried calling it (we are optimistic people), but all we got was that recorded message saying the phone was either unattended or out of coverage area. Either someone had already found the phone and decided to keep it and so threw away the SIM card, or it had become roadkill. My phone wasn’t awfully expensive – it was an old sony ericsson model which I got second-hand from my sister when she upgraded. Still, I’ve carried it everywhere with me for two years, and I’ve therefore gotten attached to it. Not to mention I had some important messages and notes in it that I hadn’t been able to back up. It was also the first time I actually ever lost a phone. So I wailed and shook my fist at the sky. After a few days of this, I went out to get a new phone. It was all so confusing. I knew there were that many different brands and models out there, but buying a new phone was never something I planned to do until maybe a couple more years, so this was not a problem I never expected to have in the near future. So I did the best I could, picking up as many brochures as I could find and annoying salespeople with my myriad questions. The problem with shopping for a cell phone is that the shops are so cheap, they never let you actually see a working model so you can see how the unit really works (unless it’s of one of those Chinese iPhone rip-offs, in which case they will be glad to even let you put in your own SIM card to test it). Also, did you know that the customer service in most shops are godawful? Maybe shop owners should consider paying their salespeople commission, because most of them acted like they didn’t give a crap if you bought anything or not. Anyway, I don’t know why I even bothered because in the end I just went to the shop that had the most helpful salespeople (Memo Xpress in Megamall – heinous name, but the salesguy I got was nice and actually knew stuff), asked them which one of their sony ericsson phones had 3g, and picked* the cheapest one. So my new baby is an SE K610i. It’s gray, pretty, small and light as a feather. And although it was not a consideration when I chose it, I found out later that it takes awfully nice pictures (2 megapixels) and videos. (There was another newer model that had everything plus an FM radio that just cost around 700 pesos more, but I figured I never listen to the radio anyway, so I passed.) This may be old hat to most of you, but I found I really liked the fact that you can use either a video or audio file as your ringtone. So friends, for fun, I will be going around taking videos of you during the next couple of weeks. Be warned. I’m not really the organizational type, or the type to plan for the future, but before I lost my old phone, I had done what most people, for some reason, fail to do: backed up my address book. I don’t know how you do it with other brands, but with my old sony ericsson, I just looked for “Send all contacts” in the menu and beamed it via Bluetooth to my Macbook. So I got nearly all my contacts loaded into my new phone easy: I just sent the VCF file from my Macbook to my phone via Bluetooth too. I say “nearly” because the last time I backed up my contacts had been around a month ago, but the two or three new numbers I had saved in my old phone since then were easy enough to hunt down through other people. So back up your address books, people. The aggravation you avoid may be yours. Other things to remember (which I didn’t, which I why I’m sharing this now): 1. When you text people to tell you this is your new number, don’t forget to mention who you are. Duh. 2. If you have more than a hundred contacts, consider informing them of your new number by e-mail instead—it’s cheaper. 3. If you’re never using your old number again, tell your contacts that they should feel free to delete that old number. It shows consideration on your part, because having too many numbers for a single contact doesn’t make sense if only one or two of those numbers are currently valid. Phonebook space is limited, after all. If any of you gentle readers have suggestions of your own, please chime in. You may be wondering (or not) why I got a sony ericsson. Nokia is, after all, the most popular brand in the country these days (I think). And then there’s Motorola and Samsung. I just like sony ericsson, that’s all. I have since the old days when the brand name was just ericsson. All my cell phones had been either ericssons or SEs. I like their phone designs, and I’m especially attached to that small blinky light thing that pulsates faster when you’ve gotten a message or a call, and turns red when your battery is running low. The one thing I didn’t like was that my old phones took too long to start up, and response time when you’re pushing buttons is slow, but fortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the case with my new phone. I’m actually sort of annoyed that the SE seems to be getting more popular these days – I don’t like having the same phone as the five other people in the room. In fact, maybe I shouldn’t have raved about SE so much in this blog. Hmmm. * Unfortunately, when I went back to actually buy the phone, I just asked the nearest salesperson to get it for me, only realizing later that he wasn’t the one who actually sold me on the unit. Contradictory to what I said earlier, I hope he didn’t lose a commission because of it. Oops.