7:48am Sat 30 Sep 2006

Well, another day, another yuan; and it’s Saturday - 7:48am. My colleague Lee is trying to fix my alarm clock on my new mobile phone. Not that the last one didn’t cause me any trouble. I believe it was sold as a kind of fake Sony Ericsson, in the local outdoor market in Dawang Lu. It had video, camera, mp3 music capability, but it was a hopeless experience and the problems never ended – once one problem was solved, another one would come to the core. Last weekend the shit hit the fan because on returning from Europe my clock had skipped back to 2005 and could not be changed, and then the alarm wouldn’t work either, even on 2005 time - which didn’t make the weekend shift at work easy. Getting colleagues and friends to wake me up at 1am Friday morning, 4am Saturday morning, 3pm Saturday afternoon, and 4am and 3pm Sunday didn’t pan out too well when my colleague woke up late and called me 10minutes into the shift on Saturday morning. (For your information, I live on the other side of the city from my work, which is a 5minute walk and half-hour taxi ride – or 10 minute walk and 45 minute subway ride - away. At 4am in the morning, subways don’t run, while taxis – or drivers who are awake - are not in abundance in my community). It also didn’t help when the screen on the phone turned white and I was unable to access any items on the phone, for example, make a call or send a message for extended periods of time.

I recall how upset I was with myself when I lost my last mobile phone in China, as I realized at that moment that my life was incredibly screwed up as a result. I couldn’t believe how dependent I had become on technology – no numbers, no way to be contacted by friends or work, no way to know when to wake up or when I should go to sleep (since I used it as a watch too).

Well, Lee’s had a look and so have I and the diagnosis is: the alarm simply doesn’t work. Well, at least I got a reminder application on the phone which does, and at least I took my friend advice and bought a Nokia, which is a reliable phone – except, in this case, it seems, for the bloody alarm function.