Chapter Fourty-Three: Semi-Smart Phone (~jinghan)

The plane touches down. And woven through the sound of the whizz of it’s power-down is the sound of text messages popping up from phones all around me. In hope, I turn on my phone.

“Searching for network.”

I stare at it with hope in my heart.

“No network found.”

I flip the old Motorola shut and stuff it into my pocket. (Black and white display and broken antenna and all!) Maybe it’ll change it’s mind once I get off the plane. It doesn’t and I hope that when I get to where I think I should be going the shuttle bus I should be waiting for is there. It isn’t. I drag my heavy suit cases to (what I thought was) a pay phone.

Ring ring. Ring ring. Ring ring. Ring ring.

Please pick up, I telepath desperately.

Ring ring.

I drag my luggage back to the shuttle parking. Time is ticking along. Maybe I should have another go at calling.

The PA system crackles “Could Jinghan Xia make her way to a courtesy telephone.”

Oh gosh!  Clearly this is getting urgent. There are phones everywhere which one is the right one? I am tired and desperate from dragging my luggage around from phone to parking lot to information desk. I flick my phone open – “No Service.” Help!! (Funny, not once did I think to check my diary for which parking lot I should have gone to.)

“Excuse me, am I able to make external calls using the phones on the wall over there,” I ask a airport person calmly and politely. (Help! Help! Help!)

“Uh not sure,” he says in that lilting american accent, “there’s some pay-phones by the escalators, they’ll definitely work.”

Okay. Don’t lose hope. Payphone.

Ring ring. Ring ring. Ring ring.

“Hello, Davis Airporter how may I help you?”

Halelluya!

“The driver needs to leave in five minutes, you know.” She doesn’t sound pleased. (Please don’t make him go without me! Please!) “Where are you at the moment? Okay how about I send him over.”

Finally I catch site of the van. “I”m so sorry!!!!!!!!”

“Nah, it’s okay, hop in,” the driver says, like nothing happened.

And so I made it to Davis with plenty of “excitement” but no disasters.

I went out yesterday and finally got myself a new phone. It’s all pretty and shiny with colour (!) and a (whoa!) slide out qwerty keyboard and (double whoa!!) internet. I can’t actually text to call any of my friends in australia, but somehow I feel like nothing bad will ever happen again now that I have my shiny new phone.

The guy in the phone store was trying to convince me it was only “semi-smart” but my friend says “well he is a poopface :p it is smarter than him!”