It was 2am on the final race night. I was scraping for whatever energy I left to stay awake, when the field engineers walked in asking if everything was okay. Usually the conversation would end there, as there just isn’t enough in common between a 20-something corporate communications professional, who primarily speaks English and 50-something engineer, who primarily speaks Chinese peppered with a few English technical terms.

But I attempted to continue the conversation anyway.

I learned that he spent almost 40 years in the company. It was his first job – and would likely be his last. He shared how life as a telecoms engineer in the 1970s was like. Back then, land lines were an absolutely rarity. It took many months to get for a phone line because that’s how long it’ll take for the engineers to lay the cables to a particular village or a town. And the day the engineers would arrive at the customer’s house, they would be welcomed like Athenian warriors coming home from a victorious battle. They were treated to a feast, adorn with praises and gifts.

Fast forward to the present. Today, field engineers are usually greeted with frustration, anger and impatience, since their presence almost always means that something is broken.

Fix my goddamn internet now!
Why isn’t my phone working?
What do you mean it’ll take 2 hours to fix?! Hurry the ^&%$ up!

Never would I have imagined that these emotional sandbangs we easily hurl our words of frustration at were once perceived as heroes.

I don’t think people have become any ruder or angrier over the decades. It’s just that we are spoiled by the convenience of modern technology that even a 30-second divorce from YouTube or Facebook seems like permanent one. And we become so bitter that we often forget to appreciate the people who made communication available in the first place.

So thank you, Engineer for not only putting up the networks, but also putting up with our callow, anger-laden remarks.

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Motorola StarTAC

My very first phone was a hand-me-down from my dad. It was 1998 and I was 12 at the time. Before you accuse me of being a spoiled kid, it was really a necessity rather than a luxury. I had just moved to a civil war-torn Indonesia then. The remnants of the violence was still very much visible, and the danger of another uprising was always looming. Hotel windows were broken, rows upon rows of shops were defaced and fear was still the prevalent in city. So my dad gave me his phone as a safety measure.

Ericsson T10

As the turmoil of the times slowly receded and peace finally prevailed again, I began to see cellphone as a cool accessory rather than a lifeline. I was flipping through my favorite magazine at that time, the now defunct Smash Hits, I came across the coolest ad a 13 year old had ever seen. A white page with multicolored phones lined up one after another. It was too cool and Santa sent me one in turquoise.

Nokia 8210

Then clamshell phones became soo yesterday. Nokia candybars became the in thing. And you could buy all these different covers to match your phone to your clothes.
At that time, I didn’t have to wear uniform to school so changing covers was sure hand.
I remember having a ton of covers from Nokia originals to the rip off ones…until I was robbed one day when I was back in Malaysia. And lost my phones along with my Oakleys. Devastation befell…

Nokia 8310

…but not for long! By then I had moved to Singapore, the land of amazing gadgetry for low, low price. I got the upgraded model the 8310 which I remember loving very dearly since it was so cute and tiny!

Nokia 7210

But then suddenly phones had color screens! I mean “snake” with color screens would be infinitely more fun than black pixeled “snake”! So I had to jump on the color bandwagon too!

Motorola V600

After the streak of Nokias, I finally switched to Motorola because it was one of the few early quad band phones with that amazing Bluetooth technology that allowed you to have a wireless earpiece. It even had a camera! I was moving over to Canada then and I needed a quad band phone so I could use it in North American and Asia without having to perpetually switch between two phones. So this was an investment. It still is the most expensive phone I ever owned to date. It lasted me two good years before the screen finally gave way.

Nokia 6131

But by then I really couldn’t care much about phones anymore. Canadians don’t really have craze for gadgetry like Asians do. No one texted me. They called. So all I needed was something I could receive and make calls with. Hence came a very simple Nokia 6131, which too lasted me two years.

And of course now I work for a telco. Phones have become more like business and less of a cool item. So I have two now, which most of you have probably seen. Nothing spectacular. The HTC S630 for my personal line, the LG Viewty KU990R for work.

As for my upcoming phone, I’m impatiently waiting for the Palm Pre. I’ve fallen madly in love with QWERTY phones and there aren’t many out there to choose from (Blackberries aside). We’ll see what Engadget and CNET say about the Pre when it’s released. If it falls short, I guess I would have to settle for the HTC Dream or a Nokia E71.

And on a not-too-unrelated note, here’s a hilarious video on Cell Phone Reunion.

So dear readers, what phones did you own? Any models you particularly adored? What about phones you’re on the lookout for? And OMG, do you remember SNAKE?

Related posts:

1. Review: LG Viewty KU990R

And here is how Nexus graphed my social network:

Clusters Based On Stage of Life

While there is a discussion here on whether friendship is primarily bound by geography or shared interests, my graph shows that it’s neither. My social networks seem to be based on the stages of my life. Well, that’s kind of obvious to me because that’s exactly how I organize my friends mentally and on my MSN account. I always group my friends according to when I meet them, and who I met them through.

Clusters Reflect Culture

However, what I did find particularly interesting is that the clusters reflect each network’s culture. The more clustered the network, the more conducive the network’s culture is for people to be closer. And all this has little to do with the size of the network. Take my Singaporean high school and Indonesian middle school for instance. Both schools were obscenely large. But my high school in Singapore had no system to ensure people from the same grade would know each other. We didn’t necessarily take classes with people from the same grade, and everyone just shared the cafeteria. So friendships were formed purely by interests. The blonde cheerleaders would sit together during lunch. The rich Asian girls would hang together after school. The British outcasts would aimlessly roam around the libraries. And of course, there would be no reason for the rich Asian girls to talk to the outcasts. And all that is reflected in my Facebook clusters since the network is a lot less dense than the one in Indonesia, where there were designated areas for each grade level – and everybody just knew everybody.

Clusters Reflect Inter-network Connections

And for the observant, you would’ve noticed that there are very strong connections amongst my networks, despite the geographic differences – especially amongst my high schools and middle school. No surprise, actually. They were all part of the same interscholastic association that allowed the schools to compete with each other in sports, forensics and music every quarter. So everybody knew everybody. And these people, mostly nomadic like me, spread across the world like a bunch of dandelion seeds to germinate universities. So, no surprise that there are links from school to university as well.

Limitations: Doesn’t Determine Who I’m Close To

With that said, that’s all Nexus is good for. It doesn’t quite track who I’m close to maybe because I have almost 900 friends on Facebook. But perhaps it’s because, as a nomad, who I’m emotionally close to is not necessarily who I’m geographically close to or who I share lots of interests with. I have extremely diverse interests, so I have hardcore party poopers and social hermits as close friends. Come to think of it, I share very little common interests with my best friends. And we don’t even live in the same countries for goodness’ sakes. But I deeply care for these people, as I would for my own family. So I know my close friends aren’t primarily determined by what they do and what they like, but more by how they think and how we get along.

And Nexus can’t possibly show that kind of dynamic.

How do you organize your friends? And does Nexus depict how close you are to your friends or how close your friends are to each other?

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