Gimme someone to kill now

Anyone who knows me will recognize my great love/obsession for tech toys, especially the ones that belong to me. So imagine my frustration when on Saturday afternoon I picked up my mobile phone to check the time and whoa, only an all-white screen greets me. For several times, I frantically remove the battery and power it on again - hoping that I will be greeted by that previously-annoying-but-now-so-endearing Sony Ericsson start-up screen. No luck there. I run a search on Google on known W810i technical issues and discover that there is actually a well documented phenomenon called the White Screen of Death (WSoD). So many forums. I browse through pages and pages of this shit for the entire afternoon and realize that there's nothing much I can do that doesn't involve dishing out money. Yes, I'm fucking stingy - so sue me. I Skype with my mom at 6:00 p.m. while concurrently using the Sony Ericsson Updater Service (SEUS) to get the software on my beloved phone, much good that did me. Fortunately, my parents didn't give me crap over my phone, I feel like a terrible son to often already.

So that was Saturday. I had a 7 page paper to write and I told myself I'd put this phone business off until Monday, when I would have handed in my paper. And yeah, I have a nice time writing a paper on whether this character in one of Borges' short stories is experiencing reality or is hallucinating. 'tis quite good stuff really - right up my alley. And then I go for an eight course Chinese New Year meal in Cupertino (home of Apple ^^) on Sunday night. I have a really swell time really, talking with (mostly) Singaporeans and getting to know other people. Yeah, I really need to go out and make more friends. This is unhealthy. And owh, you Malaysians, come to Berkeley lah.

And all the while, I was still so pissed that my mobile phone was not working.

So today i.e. Monday, since I had more free time, I got around campus and went to look for any retailers that could help me. It was a rainy day, and I forgot to check the weather forecast, which would have made me carry an umbrella. So I stopped by a Japanese place to get some beef soba. A steaming bowl of beef soba. Made me even take my glasses off 'cause the steam was condensing on them. And when I got out of the place, the rain had subsided somewhat. Owh blessed Japanese cuisine.

So yeah, got to a few retailers - none of them had any decent equipment and all referred me to the Sony Ericsson store, which I believe is in San Francisco. Blargh. And the Cingular guy told me that they would probably just flash my phone. Yeah. Anyway, I can flash my own phone. So I downloaded this piece of software from www.davinciteam.com and bought a log account for $12.99. Now, about the White Screen of Death again. It seems that the normal WSoD is a blinking white screen - and that is almost always fixed with a flash. Mine is a stable white screen, and flashing has less of a noteworthy track record with this case. But yeah, I flash my phone anyway, with help from the forums at www.expansys.com. It takes fucking forever. And guess what?

It doesn't fucking work. Yeah. Cool.

Fucking hell no. So right now I'll have to find a way to get my phone to San Francisco. Because I don't want to end this post on too much of negative note - my blog is way too emo anyway - I'll add that my phone randomly rang in class today. A tune that I had never heard before. In fact, I didn't even think it would be my phone until a friend pointed out that my pants pocket was lighted up. Which isn't necessarily a good thing, because that might mean that the instructions for my LCD screen to display stuff isn't getting relayed - hence only the white backlight. And yeah, Grace and I were assigned a seats at the same table last night. So here's a picture of me looking really flashy ^^