Apparently, Sony is the preferred brand of MI6.

In an age and place where a person's social status goes by the model of his/her cell phone, I was at the bottom of the ranks with my Nokia 3120. I saw it as nothing more than a bare-bones necessity in keeping with the status-quo of the booming, tech-savvy teen culture here in Brunei. My interest in electronics did not extend beyond Graphic Calculators, and even then, there was very little to explore in that particular line of products. As an owner of the TI-89 Titanium with all its whizzes and bangs, I got jaded very early on. "Casio...what?" remains my standard response to anyone who attempts to wax lyrical about his/her calculator.

So you can see that I clearly wasn't heading down the road to getting a fix on my phone status when I strolled into a WYWY store with my father two Fridays ago. Of course, I've been in a WYWY store before; since they're the Wal-marts of Brunei, you're bound to stroll into one at least once every week. I've always enjoyed entertaining shop attendants with a demonstration of the durability of my phone, which has survived falling 5 feet (with aided non-zero initial velocity) to the floors of most KB, Seria and Bandar WYWY branches. However, on that Friday, my phone decided that it would not take anymore punishments.

The glow of the LCD display faded as I clutched it in my sweaty palms and admonished myself for not having taken lessons in phone CPR (such was the delusional state of my mind in full panic mode). But I quickly got a grip on reality, salvaged the SIM card, and understanding that my phone truly sucked, chucked it into the nearest wastepaper basket. There would be time for grieving later, but now was not the time.

A gleam of light from a nearby display case caught my eye, and in an amazingly short span of time, I was $500 poorer and the proud new owner of a Sony Ericsson W810i. I had blundered recklessly into this purchase without having ever heard of a Sony Ericsson walkman phone, but since it was genuinely love at first sight, everything ended perfectly and we have been living together, happily ever after as they say, for the last two weeks.

I would like to share with readers the most fascinating feature of my new phone: the uber-cool camera is so awesome that it shoots National Geographic quality pictures. Observe and judge for yourselves:


What's even more amazing is that this is not Earth's moon! Besides, if you put your grey matter to good use, you'll know that there hasn't been a full moon since I first bought the phone two weeks ago. I'll save you the work of calculating or looking up the phase tables for other moons: this is Enceladus seen against the backdrop of Saturn.

My phone can take pictures of objects 1.3 billion kilometres away?! Suddenly, Google Earth has lost all of its lustre.