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5月26日 Mobile phone bluesI got the mobile phone blues. I got 'em real bad.
I have a great phone: the Audiovox 5600. About a year ago I wrote a heartfelt blog entry proclaiming my love for her. (she is last year's model but I love her nevertheless.)
When Oliver and I embarked on our extended vacation we decided to turn off the phone plan entirely. There is no reason to pay $70/month for a service we won't be using for 2+ months, we reasoned.
Then we came back, and the very first thing we did, even before fully unpacking, was to set up mobile phone service. We decided to keep the same phones, but signed up for a pay-as-you-go monthly plan because we didn't want to be tied to a 2 year contract.
The pay-as-you-go plan only allows for voice. I get $70/month in phone calls. After each call a little message appears on my screen informing me of how much money I have left to spend for the month. We get text messaging with our plan, but it costs 10 cents to send and receive a message. MMS is $1.50. I consider this too expensive, so I effectively won't/don't use this service. We have no data plan (meaning, no web browsing, no ability to use cool apps, etc. )
The formerly fancy Audiovox 5600 is now just a regular phone plus all the solitaire and jawbreaker I can play.
So now I look at my phone and long for the past: reading news on the Yahoo News Mobile site when I was stuck in traffic, checking the weather in Seattle on the cool little weather app while deciding what to wear every morning, checking the traffic conditions on 520 on the cool little traffic map app as I would get ready to leave work in the evenings, taking pictures and then emailing them to people.
What I wouldn't give to know what the Seattle traffic conditions are right now on my phone! How I long to text message with abandon!!
Those were good times I tell you, and I remember then fondly.
It feels as if my phone has been eviscerated, now merely a shell of the multi-purpose gadget she once was. All the icons on her screen reveal potential to do so much more! It is my fault that now, she is just a phone. I underestimated her worth to me.
What's especially sad about this arrangement is that I'm paying the exact same amount I was paying before we left for the trip, yet now I only get 1/3 of the service. 5月16日 Say my name!My name is Maya. It is spelled "M-A-Y-A" and pronounced (more or less) "Mah-yah." Sometimes people pronounce my name "May-ah" (like the month), a pronunciation I find totally understandable. Sometimes people spell it "M-I-A" or "M-I-Y-A" which I also find understandable, though the more common pronunciation for those spellings, in my experience, is "Mee-yah." The other day, I heard something that made no sense.
The cashier was right. "Mah-yah" can be spelled with an "I" (Miya). But it can also be spelled with an "A" (Maya). But she didn't know that second part, which for some reason made her 100% confident that
"M-A-Y-A," which is how my name was spelled on the order, was pronounced "Mee-yah."
If you are still following, (which I'm sure you're not because I bet this story is only interesting to people named Mia, Miya or Maya) that makes the cashier one of the most non-sensical people I've ever met.
Update- in all my consternation, I forgot something very important: there is another, very common way to spell my name: "M-A-I-A." Thank you, Melinda, for reminding me of this! And I apologize to all Maia's everywhere, really and truly. Still, whether the cashier thought the name was spelled "Miya" or "Maia" I still don't understand how she got "the pronunciation Mee-yah" from the spelling "Maya."
Update 2 - I'm so vain. And sorry - a second time, because I forgot about yet another spelling: "Maja." Thanks, Oliver! Any more?? So far we have, in no particular order: Maya, Maia, Maja, Mia, Miya. Geez, now I'm remembering another: Mya. And though I've never seen it, we may as well throw in: Mja and Mija.
5月8日 Random this and thatIt's been almost two weeks since we got back and even though I don't seem to have anything to do, I'm really busy all day. Mostly I'm running errands (switching banks, getting a haircut, transferring my allergy medicine from WA state to here, which is surprisingly difficult to do). But I'm also busy spotting trends and celebrities. (And maybe I'm busy with those things because I really don't have that much to do :)
Trend spotting
Everyone is wearing crocs and zipping around on razor scooters and appearing important as they fiddle with their Blackberrys. Women are wearing polka dots, shirtdresses and trench coats. I'm sick of all three, which is a shame because I really did like polka dots. Men aren't wearing anything that caught my eye.
Celebrity spotting
Maybe it's the Tribeca Film Festival that just ended, or maybe I'm a celeb magnet, but I saw four celebs in two days last week and one more today. In no order: Peter Scolari (don't deny that you remember Bosom Buddies), Amanda Plummer (she looked as odd as the characters she plays), Halle Berry (tall, thin, pretty, but her skin didn't glow like I would expect it to), Cynthia Nixon (taller and blonder than I expected, looking very pretty on her way to a premier for the Tribeca Film Festival), and Daniela Sea from the L Word (who was striking and carrying a huge backpack).
I also accidently walked by a premier for the festival at about 6pm last week (I swear it was accidental). There were real photogs with really big cameras squished behind a wooden barrier taking pictures of some skinny blond girl in a festive summer dress who was posing up a storm for them. They were actually calling out things like, "hey Beautiful, this way" and "smile for me." There was a crowd gathered watching this girl and I asked a few people who she was but nobody had a clue. I thought that was funny, that a crowd gathered without knowing who they were looking at. |
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