A Tribute to my Ideot

As I type this my hands are shaking. My heart rate is somewhere around 1000 beats per second. I cannot relax. I get up and pick some fruits from the fridge. I don’t feel like eating them so I wonder why I did that.

My world feels like it’s spinning out of control. I am like a fish out of water, literally. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. I am not doing either as I sit here typing this. My heart is bleeding, my head wants to start aching.

The cause of all this misery is a man. A man in red. A man currently taking apart one of the things I love most. A man causing my heart to bleed. If I ever see a tire around him, I’ll buy the fuel. I am replaying it over and over again. I can see him run and weave through the vehicles stuck in traffic. The dust he raises as his shoes strike the road. The crowd he melts into too soon before anyone realizes what is happening.

My heart feels constricted. I hope I don’t get an attack.

My lovely Ideot is gone…. Gone with the wind! The fucking guy in a red jacket stole it from me in traffic at Githurai, just 3 minutes from home.

I feel like shooting somebody! I’d give anything to have it back intact with all my data & contacts. Contacts I can get from Gmail though, they were synced automatically.

The Ideot had a blue cover

I was stupid, tweeting like that. I had relaxed. The fact that I was near home made me drop my guard. We had already passed the blackspots, especially the darkest one at Ngara. The window was closed. However, the guy behind me had not closed his. The thief came from behind, I couldn’t have seen him. I had Ideot (that was her name) firmly held in both hands. I had earphones plugged in and I was listening to X FM. I was just about to hit reply to a tweet.

The hands came from nowhere. In a flash, I was struggling with the guy for the phone. He had the advantage of surprise and the Ideot is shiny smooth. It glided off my hands before I could scream thief. It felt like the wind had just been snatched from my sails, like a bird whose wings have been taken away and it’s a free fall to hell. The earphones dangled uselessly.

I turned after the man in the red jacket.. helplessly I shouted, “My phone! My phone…” but it wasn’t a cry for help. It was an involuntary cry of loss. I am overwhelmed. No, that is an understatement. I feel like dying. [I no longer feel like dying by the time you’re reading this! It’s never that serious!]

It’s not just about the monetary value of the phone. Though it is cheap, I cannot afford to buy another IDEOS right now. I am that broke… so if any of you was looking to date me for my money, now you know there are no prospects here. I am digressing.

The phone has soooo much of my data. Not just information I need but information about me.

I had pimped that phone with applications. Media applications, internet applications, Bible applications, the SDA lesson app etc. That phone reads Savvy Kenya in every screen. Last I remember was updating all my apps on Thursday evening at The Mug, just after checking in on Foursquare. They have free wi-fi.

I was going to buy airtime and call Idd Salim (whose blog I sometimes read with one tab open on a Google page) to inquire about something. I was going to call my bro and ask him what time he’s coming home. I was going to call my mum and tell her I’m almost home. I was going to read my emails and check out the timetable for the next module. I was going to login to foursquare and become mayor of Thika Road, I was one checkin away, you see. I was going to transfer data from the SD card and update my playlist. Bon Jovi was getting old, wait, he’s already old. I was finally going to look at that LWUI pdf I have been carrying around and see what I could come up with. I was going to watch movies on Z my laptop and tweet about them. I was going to read a report on the mobile tech scene. I was going to do so many things with Ideot. I was going to start writing Hello World for Android, my first app in that platform. Oh, I wasn’t going to do that on the phone. Now, no more.

Sigh.

Another big, sad, sigh.

I keep remembering the things I had done this morning with the Ideot. I also keep imagining the things we were going to do together. The places we were going to check out and check-in on foursquare. The music we were going to listen to. The movies we were going to watch together on the QQ player I downloaded, if her battery lasted that long. The conversations and flirtations we were going to have with online people. The girl who likes girls that we were supposed to meet. The chats that I was going to have on WhatsApp with my close friends.

I keep imagining these things and torturing myself. I remember all the files, images, music and videos and my heart bleeds yet again.

I shall be more careful from now on. I can’t promise I won’ tweet in traffic, but I will try. I will start reading novels instead of blogs, meditating and sleeping instead of tweeting. I am an addict and I admit it so I will try to suffer through the withdrawal symptoms. If the temptation is too much, I will avoid window seats. You can never be too careful.

I have the best parents in the world. My dad has just come home while I was typing this. He has listened to my story with sympathy. He has reminded me of the number of times he tells me to keep my phone away. He has told me to look around for the cheapest phone with internet and he’ll get me one. There’s an internet-less phone lying around but he knows I cannot do without internet.

I am thinking Kabambe 3G.

Just for a while, till I can buy another Ideos. But it will never replace Ideot. Wherever you are dear, I hope your new owner treats you with the respect you deserve. I hope he/she does not misuse that information about me. I hope he/she doesn’t use my passwords and accounts that I’m already logged into. I hope they format the SD-card so that they cannot use my files. As for the one who took you away from me, may he meet his fate at a burning tire. Whatever he did was cruel but not unusual.

P.S.
Just finished typing this and I’m headed to the cyber to put it up. Problem is… where to get a flash-disk? I was really dependent on Ideot. With an IDEOS you don’t need a modem. You can surf the internet without a SIM card.

P.P.S
This is not the first time I’m experiencing loss of a phone. My Chinese N95 got stolen from my room in campus, together with my wallet. The C3 was a Westy incident. The replacement wallet got nicked from my bag last year. I have replaced my nationa & school IDs &ATM cards twice.
Looks like I’ll be Mteja till Monday morning. Adios mes amigos.