look ma, no handphone!

if i have to name one piece of machinery that is ubiquitous to our time, it would no doubt be the handphone. from the brick-like waterbottle-esque thing in the early 90s, the humble handphone has morphed into a one-piece-do-all über-gadget. buzz abounds that the handphone is going to, if it has not already, become the single most important object that will define who we are, via our stored contacts, photos, email and the like. evidential support may be easily gleaned from the world wide web; anyone who surfs the net will soon enough come across postings exhalting the wonders of their handphones, or how one cannot imagine how one survived without it, and in a larger sense, this sense of instant connectivity, in the past.

as a person who doesn't really care much for this particular piece of technology (let's just say that the sole impetus of purchasing a handphone then was the advantage of not having to walk down and up three flights of stairs and fight for the use of two public phones every time i want to make a call), due to the fact that i absolutely abhor having to be available 24/7 (especially when your availability makes you a natural candidate for becoming a real life target board), i've developed a somewhat alienating set of rules that will not win me any handphone-etiquette awards. all my close friends, i'm sure, have one time or another been infuriated with me for having to endure my lack of responsitivity in answering my calls. my retort would then run along the lines of "if the call is so important to you then you jolly well leave an sms and pray that i deem it important enough for me to spend an ounce of my time responding to your query".

i know; i'm not exactly a nice guy.

somehow, though, i absolutely cannot live without e-mail. currently, i have five e-mail accounts, two of which i check at least four times a day if time permits. my theory is that a phone call, which demands an instant response, denies a person a chance to think things through, unlike email (and to a lesser degree, sms). furthermore, as no one, except for the truly extreme cases, are in front of their pcs all the time, you are granted a respite of a couple of hours-days to respond. add to the fact that i'm a person who absolutely hate surprises (i read endings of books before the beginnings - there i've said it), email (on a pc! none of this blackberry crap) becomes my preferred tool of communication.

that said, can i really survive a day without my handphone? judging by the sense of helplessness i feel whenever i forget to bring my phone out (such as today, when i spent the better of a half-hour contacting three other people to get a fourth person's number), i'm guessing that at this point in time, i'd probably have to say nyet. which is a shame really; for my current life, if not for this break-neck speed at which events plays out, and which possessing a handphone contributes a large part to, is actually quite perfect.