Handphone relationships

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By bigpumpkin | April 17, 2007

Our dependence on technology is astonishing. Twenty years ago, a handful of KL-lites had a mobile phone. You know those large black ATUR hand carry sets that double up as weapons? Today, everyone has a handphone. Six year old children, maids, the bus driver, market sellers, babies, dogs…..What has happened?

Handphones have made our brains lazy. We take everything for granted that things are only a phone call away. We fail to plan in advance. I wonder to myself sometimes, how old will T be before she gets a handphone?

Then every handphone owner seem to have a unique relationship with their handphones. Whether it be aesthetic, function or pure entertainment. Some have Hello Kitty trinkets attached to their phones. Some carry their phones in baby blue furry phone bags/holders/cases. Some have glow in the dark stickers and funky hands free kits. Some have expensive multi-gadget type phones. Some use it only for their secret lovers. Some use it still as weapons ala Naomi Campbell. Some can’t get off their handphone game addictions.

What interests me most is whether you live for your handphone or if you live your life. I say this because I know people who cannot live without their handphones! They either have them around their necks or carry them everywhere they go within the house. In the shower, the loyal handphone sits on the dry vanity counter and watches your naked body. During a smelly poop, the handphone is privileged to revel in such personal space, albeit malodorous. Some people have to read every text message the moment they get it, like when they are in the cinema. They need to hear every call they get, as though their lives depended on it. Their relationships with their handphones are sacred.

Me on the other hand, depend on my handphone for emergencies or messages for quick communication purposes. I don’t like phones. Actually, I detest phones. I’d much rather talk face to face. My handphone burns up if anyone started talking more than five minutes to me. That to me, is already way too long. Sometimes, we (the Hubs, T and I) leave the house without my handphone. To me, as long as the most important people are with me, everything else can wait. Most of the time, my handphone sits in one location of my house. For all intents and purposes, I am not the best person to contact if you wanted an immediate response. My family knows how to reach me and that’s all that matters.

Just for the record, I was once talking to a friend who is an electronics engineer at Motorola during a function and asked him about the dangers of phone radiation. I said that out of the more popular brands (Sony/Ericsson/Samsung etc), it seems that Motorola is supposed to be one of the safest phones around in terms of damaging human cells. I asked him if all this talk about handphone dangers were really true. His answer was slightly worrying.

“Even Motorola handphones are bad for you”

*NB - Naturally the scenario changes if one is in business or the corporate world where speed of communication is the key to a done deal. Those were the days I had the phone around my neck. Thank God, those days are over.

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