On the Nokia website, on the page where they talk about downloadable ringing tones and their application in customising your phone, it actually says the following (by way of introduction):

We've all experienced it ... the moment when your phone rings and you look to anyone close by to gauge their reaction. Does it get the nod of approval and raise a few smiles?

Well, God help us all. Anyway. I got a new handphone today. Not a mobile. Not a cell. A handphone.

It's the Nokia 3650. The one Vicki Zhao calls Ekin Cheng from, while she's having a bubble bath, in My Dream Girl. It's almost as big as my previous phone and looks, as a friend of mine pointed out earlier today, like it not only sends and receives calls, takes photos and runs applications, but also lets you program your VCR and open your garage door. It's presently being phased out in favour of the 3660 and some very beastly new phones due for release in Q1 2004; indeed the (rather snooty) woman at Optus told me flat out that you couldn't even get it anymore. The user manual runs to 179 pages and is very boring indeed. When I asked about it at another place, the guy there asked me why I wanted it specifically; I told him it was a geek phone; and in retrospect I had no idea how right I was. It's everything I wanted it to be and more.

It has a big screen, in Colour; when you turn it on it asks you for your password and then does a pretty little animation of two hands clasping, plus some other I'm an operating system singing and dancing. It gives you the impression of being about as smart as a dog. My previous phone, a 3210, came across as about as smart as a cactus (which isn't necessarily that bad; bone-headed UI can make some phones seem as intelligent as more-or-less-dense lumps of rock). It's co0mplient with more acronyms than I can easily remember. The keys glow an eery blue when you press them, in particularly fetching contrast to the warmth of the late evening sky reflecting off the lucid, flawless screen.

If you want to have really nice yum cha you should go to Pepper Chili near Po Hong on Little Bourke street. Badminton as usual today; also spent half an hour comparing cameras with Tracy; and isn't it wonderfully nice ocassionally to wholly surrender yourself to a vice you otherwise steadfastly resist.