Friday, April 04, 2008

Notes to myself - how to cut down on your cellphone bill

R1794. That's my cellphone bill this month. It's a ridiculous amount given that I feel most of the time I am NOT on the phone. But I guess being in a long distance relationship means those calls every night do add up. So I have to start asking: "do you want to talk every night, or visit every second weekend?" Because that is what it boils down to, and it's an either or.

My contract has a subscription of over R400 a month, with 240 free minutes. But my phone is on the fritz a bit after I dropped it whilst cycling (was carrying groceries on my racing bike - quite unusual). It shattered into a few hundred pieces, but I was able to to put humpty together again. Kudos to the manufacturers - SAMSUNG. A phone made out of these fragile components and yet I'd basically drop kicked it a hundred times and it still works. Except for occasional signal failures.

In June I am looking forward to upgrading just to have a phone without defects. |I've enjoyed the SAMSUNG, but I'm drawn to the new Blackberry. Vodacom said I could get a new compact Blackberry for a R350 subscription and 100 free minutes. In one sense it is a worse deal than what I have, but the Blackberry has plenty more features (including GPS).

I believe, at the end of the day, we need to find ways to talk more face to face, and less through all these 'devices' that are supposedly meant to connect you.
These include computers, phones, cars and media in general (newspapers, television, radio etc). We tend to replace our communities using these analogies for community, but real community is really real groups of people assembling, being spontaneous, being real. We all know to what extent bullshit is built into these virtual networks. Reality is always more fascinating, dynamic and - it's free.

So in June I'm going to go Blackberry. At least I will know where I am, but I'll take that under advisement ;-)

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