I shall not be moved

Phone in a nature call

Leaving church yesterday I found the need to visit the public conveniences in the shopping centre before making a collection which had me queue up on one floor only to be told the collections department was two floors below and again, another queue.

After I collected the goods, I stepped out of the shopping centre and reached into my side holster to retrieve my mobile phone, it wasn’t there, it could not be anywhere else, it had to be in the toilet cubicle on the toilet roll holder, something I have never done before, leave my phone anywhere but in my holster or my pocket when I am away from home.

Catching myself from the irrational

A flood of panic was about to overwhelm my thinking, you do everything on a phone, is it replaceable, how do you recreate the user experience and convenience curated and cultivated on your phone and a million other thoughts.

I had to catch myself, Akin keep your head and calm down, to override the hyperactivity of my imagination, I had no intelligent words to speak but to speak in tongues which focused me towards knowing whatever the case, I would have my phone.

Moved to thankfulness and gratitude

The cubicle I used was vacant and the phone had gone and immediately I thought of going to the information desk of the shopping centre as there was no toilet attendant about. I found the information desk and told the man there; that I had just lost my phone in the gentlemen’s toilets. He asked what brand it was, and as I told him he produced my phone saying someone had just handed it in some five minutes before.

Great relief and thankfulness, angels ministering even when you have done silly things. However, as I meditated on the situation looking for a place to sit down before calling Brian, I knew for myself and the many things that I have been through then, before, and after, I shall not be moved.

On wounded knee a screen is shattered

Cracking a screen

I have never had a cracked screen on my mobile phone, probably because I have been careful or just because the phones themselves are quite durable.

I remember commenting to certain friends who cannot resist an iToy that I have never seen an iPhone without a cracked screen, they must be a design feature and there is a business that thrives on replacing screens.

Yet, I have come to that experience and it happened last night, though there is much of a story to tell before we get to that episode. A few days before, I walked into a shop where I had been eyeing a pair of boots but had not decided whether they were for me.

Sizing my foot

On this particular day, the shop had three boots on display and for the very first time, it is strange to walk into a shop and find that the shoes where all the same size and that size is my size. There doesn’t seem to be a good standard measure for shoe sizes, though, on the law of averages, we can settle for Size 12 UK or 46 EU, though I have seen Size 13 UK fitting like Size 12.

When I went shopping for trainers a few months ago, I noticed that shoe sizes could be arbitrary when for a particular brand I was shod with Size 19, that was scary. My feet are long, they are not big and so the pejorative of Big Foot or Sasquatch is just what it is, pejorative.

Shoes matter especially from a childhood where my feet outgrew my shoes before I had worn them in and long before they were replaced, I suffered a lot, so the comfort of good fitting shoes is the banishment of childhood trauma.

Courtesy of Weinbrenner Shoe Company

Fitting the parts

These Undercover boots are no more on the market, sturdy 14-hole boots that demand a new way of lacing them, offering the comfort of ankle support, though not the easiest to slip on or take off. I had not worn them in when I decided to wear them for a journey without a spare pair of footwear.

My first tentative steps were adjusting to the weight of the shoes, the feeling at the shin where I have to pull the tongue to ensure the laces are a bit taut rather than loose, the shaft high up on my leg giving me a clunky feel to a plodding walk until I was well-adjusted to the newness of it all.

The collar is snug, the hem of my trouser leg will slip over the boot and yet when wearing a tracksuit, the track bottoms can be tucked right into the collar, giving a rather militaristic look to things.

Falling on hands and knee

In any case, I had just finished looking at my phone and since I was about to cross the road, I held the phone in my right hand, noticed that the cars had stopped and I crossed. Just as I absentmindedly mounted the pavement or thought I had, I really had not cleared the height either out of getting adjusted to the outsole, I tripped and almost as if I was in a drunken stupor, fell forwards breaking my fall more with my right hand than my left hand.

My left knee hit the ground hard and I was not down for long as my next step as a lady ask if I was OK was to get up and continue walking, thanking the lady for her concern whilst somewhat dazzled by the unexpected accident.

It was then that I looked at my phone and noticed the screen had cracked, it had taken the brunt of breaking my fall. The phone was not damaged beyond repair but I immediately saw that the pattern security lock was not as responsive that I had to change to a PIN code instead.

Nursing my wounds

When I got back to my hotel, I pulled off the boots, took off my trousers and my poor knee was both grazed and bruised, it had bled a bit and it hurt too. I cleaned the wounds but had not first aid kit to tend it. I wrapped tissue paper round my knee, fixed on a towel like a bandage and went to bed until the morning when I would get some antiseptic cream and plasters for my knee.

As my mobile phone is not a popular brand, the screen cannot be easily replaced except if I acquire one off eBay, the intention to replace my phone that I have vacillated about for months has now been forced upon me.

Invariably, I cannot say if it was the boot or plain clumsiness that caused my fall, it happened and that is the tale of the broken screen on bleeding knee.

Skype to the rescue

Scratch cards and phone cubicles

The first time I got one of those telephone scratch cards to make International calls to Nigeria, I was completely clueless about what to do, then I once walked into one of those international telephony shops in Antwerp, the system did not work for me and the support was dire.

A number of those telephony shops on the Antwerp main street in front of the Central Station now have Police Notices, one can only wonder why - the suspicion is that they might have been havens for all sorts of nefarious activities from Advanced Fee Fraud to Money Laundering.

Anyway, I have had the comfort of my landline to call anywhere I want in the world without worrying about the bill. There have been times that I have made those calls on my mobile phone if situation requires that I do.

The loss of the international telephony service from my landline is definitely not good, most of my contacts are in the UK and then I have friends all around the world including Papua New Guinea (PNG), you say Papua What? Well, he went there and I would only visit to rendezvous at Darwin in Australia - the whole thought of natives picking their teeth with my bones is not in the least endearing.

That is what happens if your knowledge of faraway lands is based on fable, folklore, generalisations and rumour.

Skype, it is

So, I have got me Skype - Internet Telephony, the whole works - ability to call landlines - €0.017 per minute - over most of the globe, call forwarding to my mobile, private phone number in the UK such that with Skype Pro all national calls are free and a Sitecom Skype-compatible USB handset.

Since, I always travel with my laptop and I always try to get online anyhow, Skype is an added capability that means, I do not have to pay exorbitant hotel phone bills or outrageously rip-off mobile roaming charges.

I think I have adopted this technology at the right time; for those who really do need to have completely free calls, get on Skype and get your friends on Skype too, that way, you create networks of free communication for as long as you want.

Timekeeping by bean counting ...

One, twee, trois, cuatro, funf ...

Imagine you had to keep time in seconds by counting beans out of a large sack with regular monotony. By the time, you have counted 3,600 beans an hour would have passed.

At 86,400 that would be a whole day and a leap year, one, which we are leaping into in 2004, would total 31,622,400. Multiply that, by the number of your years and you could be in the Guinness Book of Records for bean counting.

Well, I spent the whole morning bean counting each hour of work I had done for 49 weeks. The context of my emails in the Inbox and Sent Items is more or less a picture of my year at work.

Archive for review

I used to archive my emails every month until I realised that the world out there amongst the employees of the same firm is a fierce and vicious charade of people whose published ability is to stitch you up, you will have to be a multi-Houdini to come out unscathed.

The morale of being caught in that kind of setting is to document every concern you have no matter how trivial and call on it 4 months after when some smart chap tries to point evil fingers at you for what they should have done properly in the first place. Luckily, we have no limits on our mailboxes.

So, I bean-counted my 49 weeks and presented the results to the pen pushers who were going to extract the nutrients of my timesheets for the PowerPoint - the final PowerPoint of the year - see my previous blog about PowerPoints.

Toiling without reward

As for the nutrients, I know that in the summer months I averaged 6 weeks of work for each month and most especially in August when I was away for 2 weeks on holiday, I still ended up doing 4 weeks work. Therefore, accounting for all the time I had off sick and my leave, my extra hours has given me a balance of no time off this year.

Now one would think there is some compensatory value for all those extra hours of toil, and there is - my boss was not particularly interested in the number of hours I booked, rather, he was interested in the number of hours he could cross charge to other departments.

Obviously, creating opportunities for cross charging is a great benefit for the department but why recognise the dramatis personae involved in creating value, we are paid a salary, we should be grateful to the point of pouring in goodwill for more abuse. Masochism per excellence is supposed to be our core skill.

I might be able to count beans faster in Mandarin...

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A major crisis averted

When your mobile is not handy you realise you can think fast.

Just afternoon, I noticed my phone clip did not have my mobile phone attached, so I went round the office enquiring about my phone and everyone suggested I call the phone and that would signal where it is.

Being the considerate citizen I am, I usually have my phone on vibrate mode, being discreet and responsible on the trains belies the fact that I expect others to behave likewise, but the Dutch society is built on everyone exercising their individual rights without recognition of the fact that it is everyone considering the other that makes society work.

What if we all littered the streets with our rubbish, deigned to clean up after using public facilities, let our mobile phones belch out those unfortunate tunes which should have the bearers certified, rushed at everything without order and so on?

We would have chaos beyond comprehension, but there is always someone who knows his or her rights but nothing about their responsibilities.

Where is that phone?

Therefore, every smart person at work suggested I call my mobile phone - Que! - It would have to be on some empty barrel to make enough noise for me to notice it.

Thinking, worry, desperation, panic sets in - if I have lost the phone, all those numbers are not stored anywhere else, I have to take out a new contract for the phone is not insured, the service provider would want to sign declarations with more gravitas than the UN Charter to retain my old number.

The police would offer to take a statement in 3 days (after the lucky pilferer has run up a mammoth bill calling Jupiter and holding a conference call with the aliens of the Andromeda galaxy) they might help more if your have the IMEI number [A unique manufacturer's code on your phone] with which they can flood the phone with messages as to make it unusable for anyone who perchance picks it up.

Calm down! Man ... you were charging up the phone at home last night and you might have put on the clip without picking up the phone. More so, you have not taken any calls today, so it might as well be at home. A life crisis might just be averted for me to get on with work.

Five hours later, the phone is fully charged - bliss!