Family | Frying To Communicate

Or was it trying to communicate?...

Since my son totalled his Sony Ericsson a few months back by accidentally dipping it into sea water off Sentosa Island, Wify and I have been quite restless not being able to reach him whenever he is out of the house.

Though Singapore is a relatively save place to live in, and public phones are scattered all around, we still are quite anxious to have the one direction communication - him to call us to update where he is.

Just like a watch, we felt awkward when he does not have a cell phone on him.

I guess we would feel safer if this era was still on pagers or beepers too, because that was the best bet then, we just wish for him to be able to call us immediately and vice versa. We feel safer with a cell phone on him anyway.

Hmm... that makes me wander, do doctors use beepers anymore in Singapore? Maybe hospitals will just text to their cell phones nowadays.

Anyway.. coming back to my son having a cell phone...

With that said, my quest since then have been to look for an affordable cell phone to replace the corroded one as soon as possible.

Promos after promos came and went, ads after ads; even second hand phones were considered, but nothing suited what I had in mind for him, until Sunday.

An ad from Carrefour hyper-mart selling cell phones without a contract which is quite affordable. The models on promotion were the ones I would consider buying my son for.

A Sony Ericsson K510i selling for S$298.00. Brilliant!

Cool deal, so my son and I headed to Suntec City to hopefully get one quickly before the stocks ran out.

The deal was good, but with a catch...

I guess I never learn. Nothing is too good to be true these days. You can buy one at the stated price but you have to buy a second set of third-party battery that costs S$58.00, with a warranty of 6 months.

Argh! Sigh...

That would total to S$356.00. With such a price tag, it was not worth to buy anymore... considering that this phone has only 28M memory with no memory expansion slot!

I do not know about anyone else, but I hardly open and close my hind phone cover to slot-in and out batteries. The covers will wear off and come loose. I charge my phone directly and I guess so does the whole world.

My son was clearly devastated! Something so near he could taste the radio waves, but it was not meant to be.

We shopped for groceries at Carrefour instead... with my son dragging his feet in sorrow. Even its popular Chocolate rainbow-sprinkled donuts could not cheer him up... though he ate one right at checkout.

We ate dinner at Sakura Family Restaurant at Capitol Building and a take-out for Wify.

Then rushed to M1 Shop at Tampines Mall to check out a weekend promo I saw in the newspaper this morning before it closed for the day.

I was not too eager to go to M1 initially because I thought my son's 2-year phone plan had still a few months left to go, so buying a phone will require an additional S$100.00 on top of the advertised phone price.

I was fortunately wrong! Never been so glad to be wrong before!

With his plan already expired, we were able to buy the phone at the stated price, so long as we renew the contract for another 2 years. No S$100.00 top-ups. Yes! Worked for me!

Instead of K510i, the choice of other models and brands were opened.

Being a Sony Ericsson long-time fan, we stick to the same brand and found the new K610i was the best value-for-money choice.

The latest 3G phone with a 2 Mega-pixel Camera and another integrated video conferencing camera on the front side.

Of course he would not be using the latter feature anytime soon, but heck, it comes with the phone and the features are latest to last longer before being obsolete for service in a year or so.

With the phone, came a good promo to buy a Bluetooth Earpiece to go with it. A Motorola set was recommended as one of 2 brands that are good... forgot what the other brand was.

My son does not really need a hand-free wireless earpiece. He is not a busy executive who needs to talk while driving

He does not even use the cell phone as often as I do, but I have this lingering concern on cell phone radiation. The latest was in my post Techno Cooking Your Brains? of a demonstration on cooking an egg with a pair of cell phones.

Every time he uses the cell phone I felt terrified and guilty inside that the radiation emitting from the cell phone is frying his brain cells. Of course the concern is still being debated in the scientific world as far as I know.

I think I should have one too! I wish to save whatever brain cells I have left for longer. Maybe from my next pay... definitely.

So to put my mind at rest, the Motorola Bluetooth earpiece was the ideal solution. I bought it for him at a promo price of S$68.00 together with a screen protector for $9.00.

The whole purchase worked out to be S$306.00. Wify will flip when she finds out that I have splurged too money on our son.

Tough living in a connected world. You just need to.

Finally! My son is contactable