The return of the Nokia phone

The Nokia Lumia 800 does all the things other smartphones do, while looking and feeling better than most.

It has interesting proprietary features such as Nokia Drive, which is a proper talking GPS like the kind you put in your car. Windows Mobile has come a very, very long way. Setting up and synching took only about the same amount of time as the iPhone 4 did. You can import many of the apps you have on other phones. The camera is good, and sharing pictures on social networks is a lot easier and more intuitive than other smartphones I’ve tried. And beneath it all is the almost irrational belief that since it’s a Nokia, it must also be more reliable, better tested than the others.

But I think the most amazing feature of the Nokia Lumia 800 is the social network one. All your contacts are linked to their Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter profiles. For example, if you’re looking for your friend’s number, you also see under his name his latest FB post or tweet. And you can choose to call, text, send an FB message, mention him on Twitter or email him at any of his addresses. The listing reflects the real world where your friend is one person, with several ways to be contacted. So friends who have contact details under both married and maiden names, my cousin from Cornell who has about a million addresses and phone numbers, people who have both personal and company FB profiles, and even people whose phone numbers I don’t have, but have other means of contacting are all in one consolidated, streamlined phonebook. And a shining example of a product feature matching the brand promise. Nokia, connecting people indeed.

As with all good ideas, this one too has a simplicity to it that makes you wonder why nobody thought of it before. It makes me almost burst with pride.

Many years ago, I was a small cog in the teams that helped launch the first Nokia camera phone, the first music phone, several Communicators and many startlingly edgy models that were probably ahead of their time. There was much pride in being associated with them, a time in the life of the brand when it was a pioneer. It was a time when internet and mobile were just beginning to collide. The iPod had just transformed portable music. Brands had just started to get in touch with customers digitally. Online banking and bill payments were still pretty cool, not a basic requirement. Traditional ad agencies were talking of digital departments, old agency folk were introduced to new types of skills. Those who worked on the Nokia account were at the front of this revolution.

I moved on from the account and agency, and eventually succumbed to the lure of the shiny pink Razr, but never really lost the my-first-one affection for Nokia.

So it is with great pleasure that I now find I can give the Nokia Lumia 800 my highest praise – after working on it for a few hours, the iPhone felt clunky.

How government services should behave

The Singapore Public Utility Board are rockstars.

I arrived home tonight at 11:00 pm to find no water in my taps. No water. Until that actually happens you have no idea how fundamental it is to your life.

I called the apartment building's 24-hour helpline, only to be told unhelpfully - five calls and three maintenance guys later - that it was my problem, not theirs. Their weird reason was that it was just one flat and not the whole floor. By then it was almost midnight and I still had no water. I had a fight with the guy who told me this, hung up and wandered outside my flat, looking at the stuff there for the tenth time, hoping to spot some magic valve I hadn't seen before. There were none - the only meter outside my door is for electricity; I've never seen the water meter.

I checked online for 24-hour plumbers and found several. Then I registered that if all the taps were dry, it was probably not a plumbing issue but one of supply, which would make it either vandalism or a mistake. Either way, I needed the support of some sort of authority. In any case, I was reluctant to hand over a hundred dollars to a bunch of plumbers for something they may not be able to solve. So I went to the SP Services website and called the first phone number I saw. I eventually got someone who told me I'd called the wrong place. But - and this is a very big but - he didn't stop there. He asked me: "but tell me what assistance you want". So I told him my story and he said he would leave a message for one of the Public Utility Board guys to drop by and check. I thought he meant in the morning, but 40 minutes later, I heard water in the kitchen sink (I had, of course, left the tap on in my dismay). And three minutes after I'd turned it off and done grateful raindances, a PUB engineer arrived at my door to tell me I should inform my building management somebody's messing around in the water meter area and playing with the valves.

It was government service in the best sense. He did not even let me tip him.

Update at 7:30 am: The kinder of the building maintenance guys I had spoken to last night did show up early, as he had promised.

Can you hear the drums Fernando?

I looked up casually from my book somewhere on my train journey this morning, was briefly confused about whether I was coming or going and suddenly realized something very startling, apropos of nothing – I'm happy. I'm almost terminally broke, nearly forty, about 10 kilos over my ideal weight, and my career is a revolving door. And yet somehow I'm happy.

I'm not given to counting my blessings and being grateful. In fact, I usually exist in an exalted state of resentment. I complain all the time. I throw tantrums on the smallest provocation, feel sorry for myself on none at all. And yet somehow I'm happy.

I have a good boss and nice colleagues. At least half my clients respect my work. Having known the other thing, I fully appreciate the importance of these to my overall well-being. Now and then, my Facebook newsfeed throws up a status update from some brand page that I wrote - and I'm reminded afresh that my content calendar was accepted as-is by the client. With no changes at all. Small though it is, that's two doses of job satisfaction a week, the highest rate of my working life.

When I’m done working, I have family and friends, rolled into one, a daily benediction. Actually that’s even when I’m working – I objected to being in the same office as my brother but actually it’s fun.

My flat is in a crummy building that I mutter to myself about every day, but it sits on the edge of a lovely lake that is another daily benediction (hourly on the weekends). And inside, I have room for a study, with a desk by a window through which I can see trees and rain.

Then I returned to my office from the rooftop where I’d been sitting writing this, and I found my life had changed again. It was not a nasty change – far from it – but I will have to uproot at short notice, leave the desk, the window, the lake and the family, start again with new colleagues. And I'm still 10 kilos heavier than I want to be. On the other hand, great problems hold great opportunity, and as a boss once said to me “only stupid people are not nervous”. Especially when I keep getting exactly what I wanted, quite unawares. Maybe that's why I'm happy.

In the words of ABBA, if I had to do the same again, I would, my friend.


Fernando, ABBA. Non-album single, 1975

I know what I did last October

I enthusiastically embraced what I think of as the Lebanese spirit. Distilled over many centuries of being at war and in the path of invaders or retaliators, it’s a simple concept: the important things are uncertain, so just have a good time wherever you are, with whatever you have. Surround yourself with glossy magazines and shiny things. Expend your energy on the colour of your walls. Get worked up about the texture of cushion covers. Worry only about the alignment of rugs. The rest will be history anyway.

So all through October, I flung myself into setting up my hard-won flat. No sleeping on a mattress for six months this time round; it was going to be visitor-ready from the start (though, come to think of it, the mattress-furnished flat had visitors plentifully and often. Perhaps it was only my head that needed furnishing, but it’s too late now).

All day, every day, last thing at night, first thing in the morning, I sent and received messages about bookshelves, wardrobes, sofas and beds with strangers from Craigslist and Gumtree. In the evenings, I visited lovely houses to look at stuff. The notes function on my phone became well-thumbed. Ikea catalogues were attacked with Post-Its. Carrefour, Best Denki, Mustafa, Courts and Mega Discount were scoured for the best-priced appliances. I made obsessive notes, took incessant measurements, updated tireless Excel sheets.

By the end of the month, I’d travelled all the Metro lines from end to end and seen parts of Singapore I doubt I’d have seen any other way. Some of it I saw from the cab of a truck. After many arguments with various men-with-vans on the subject of carrying stuff up flights of stairs, my BFF of the time was a tiny, cheery jockey who was moonlighting in his lunch break as a van driver.

I met some nice people that I will never see again, considering the only reason they were selling is because they were leaving town. I encountered startling meanness, equally amazing generosity and much weirdness. The lady who sold me her plants wanted them picked up at once. But when I got there, she made me coffee, waved me to a chair and explained leisurely (in sign language) how her husband was upset that she hadn’t learnt English after a year in Singapore. It turned out my text messages were with the husband, not her. She then lavished upon me a bird cage and extensive crockery, including the cup I was drinking from.

Another day, an Argentinian diplomat was ridiculously unbending on the phone about the price of a high-end food processor, but had, when I arrived to get it, also included a crock pot, full set of baking dishes and a cookie jar. The only extra thing I paid for was a cake plate that her little kid wanted to sell me for a dollar.

My cash flow situation was soon suffering from what my brother calls the Daiso Effect –where nothing costs more than two dollars so you fling things recklessly into your cart and end up spending some 200 anyway.

I cannot believe how small a budget I’d been working with or how much was possible with so little. It was a lot of work of course, but with every new thing I managed for myself, I walked a little taller, felt a little more capable, made this city a little more mine.

Discovering Japan – Part 2

My impressions of the world are formed almost exclusively from the books I read, the music I listen to and the words I write (even the places I actually live in). What with one thing and another, I haven’t read too many books that go to Japan, so the country has just sat in a box at the back of my mind. But things kept being put into the box – a book on traditional Japanese skincare borrowed from a Bangalore library long ago; the creative sophistication dimly perceived in Japanese comic books; sparks of interest set off by movies like Lost in Translation and The Ring; a feature or article seen in passing; anecdotes from an uncle whose entire career has been in Bridgestone; trivia from my brother and sister-in-law who both work with teams there; the occasional brand launch or research document thrown up by my own work – until suddenly the box is full and has somehow moved itself to the front of my mind (much like a simple cardboard carton might behave in a Japanese horror film).

Singapore has a sizable Japanese population and very many Japanophiles, so there’s plenty of opportunity to indulge the new curiosity. Given the war history, it’s understandable that there’s no well-preserved Japantown anywhere, but there are definitely malls that are more Japanese than others. I keep coming across them in the search for low-priced books. (Books are costlier than gold here and the local library does not supply enough variety, so I spend much time and effort hunting down stores that sell second-hand.)

Last week, I had government work which required me to walk through a strange, mall-like place that at first glance looked like a has-been, but on closer acquaintance turned out to be busy and prosperous. My antennae caught a shop selling winter clothes and ski equipment. It’s a sure sign of a Japanophile establishment, and by now I know there will always be a bookshop in one. Sometimes it’s a used-book store, sometimes a specialist boutique selling only graphic novels, anime or fantasy sagas. Whatever it is, there’ll always be something interesting to read in there (and sure enough, a thorough search on my way back did yield a bookstore – big, cut-price, half Japanese and half English).

There’ll also be CDs with horrific covers and vinyls you’ve never heard of. You’ll find Hello Kitty merchandise for all ages, whimsical accessories for grown-ups that even an eight-year-old might hesitate to put on her dolls. Gourmet stores where you do not recognise any of the food. Lifestyle stores that sell minutely useful things, such as pill boxes shaped like beetles. And, as stated in a previous post, totem pole umbrellas and keychains that acknowledge fridge-magnet cousins. Japan must be a singularly fascinating place to live in. Maybe the streets are paved with books. I should go see.

There's this blogger I used to know...

There never seems to be anything to say. Emotions are tamped down, even the fears are muffled. Daily life is unexamined, the minutae of work and office are unspoken. And I’m quiet about the past two years, even to myself. There doesn’t seem to be anything to be said there, either. Sometimes, I silently contemplate the pieces and experiment with putting them together again. Sometimes I equally silently reject the self-pity.

And when you’ve sat in silence for a long time, it’s hard to break it. You sound over-loud and awkward. The things you say acquire a depth of meaning that you probably didn’t mean. Jokes fall uneasily. Comments become pronouncements. Everything seems simultaneously too serious and too uninteresting to mention. After a lot of thought you think of something to say and suddenly you are the cynosure of all ears. And your mind shrinks from such extravagant display so you decide to go home quietly.

Unexpected Song

I walk out of the office at 10.30 pm, rather tired and dispirited, as one would be. In the lift lobby, I hear music pounding from the roof - JWT's having some species of jamboree on the roof, I saw them setting up earlier. I consider crashing it, but catch sight of myself in the fancy glass wall and reconsider in a hurry. When the lift arrives it contains a picturesque man, only slightly unsteady. When I get in he asks me confidentially: is this going up or down? Down, I say kindly, but with a private grin. I am suddenly and strangely cheered by this sign that it's a good party upstairs. Downstairs I find two girls in full carnavale mode handing out something or the other to people coming in. I assume they're part of the JWT theme. But when I pause to take a picture I learn that the person accompanying them works for Lowe, who are having a rival party down the road and are here poaching guests for good-natured, though mysterious, reasons.

The private grin is now very much out in the open. In fact, my evening has suddenly become so wonderfully nuts that I feel as effervescent as if I did go to one or both of the parties. It's one of those moments when I remember what I like about being in advertising. Nobody parties like an agency. And nobody else chooses a Monday night for a Street Party that proclaims "1 Night, 3 Bars, Free flow".

Right now, I'm sitting on the train with an invitation in one hand, my phone in the other, a manic grin on my face, writing this. It started as a Tweet, migrated to a Facebook status when Twitter proved inadequate and finally fetched up here when I realized even FB did not have enough scope!

You'd think the invite would be tempting but even my dead body wouldn't go to a party looking like I do now. As you can see from the picture!

Princesses – the tech specs

My niece's world is currently ruled by the various Disney princesses. My world has consequently been er...enriched?... by new versions of the fairytale princesses I knew when I was a kid (Disney was still in its Mickey-Donald phase then, so I had the Andersen-Grimm non-musical version). The rant about Disney leaching out the uncomfortable life lessons - and therefore the soul - of the stories is another post. This is just about the princesses, the ones in the written fairy tales. The male leads didn’t get much attention; most of them are pretty much one-dimensional (as my niece has subconsciously registered - she mixes them up freely in her games). Which would explain the other important feature of the fairytales: eternal love is usually accomplished in a single look. Here they are, seven of the princesses as I see them, with a handy watchability guide for the movie version:

1. Cinderella wallowed in soot and self-pity and needed a fairy godmother to help her go to the ball. The ugly sisters should have shared the prince, he would have had more fun in the long run.
No. of times you can sit through the movie without losing your mind: 2

2. Sleeping Beauty slept through it all. She didn’t seem very upset about being kissed awake by a trespasser. The Disney movie resembles the story in only three points - malevolent witch curse, death by spindle and wakened by kissing. The other 70 minutes are different and not too bad.
No. of times you can sit through the movie without losing your mind: 7

3. Snow White was the sort of idiot who took food from strangers and her prince was a necrophiliac who kissed girls in coffins.
No. of times you can sit through the movie without losing your mind: 2

4. The nameless one in the Frog Prince was a spoilt and unscrupulous brat who would promise anything just to get her way. Then she came up against something even slimier than herself. Also, this is one story that the Disney version has vastly - and I mean, vastly - improved.
No. of times you can sit through the movie without losing your mind: Probably a lot but have only had to see it once so don't know.

5. The Little Mermaid… no, I can’t be rude about her. Good fairy tales can stand up to the kind of critical appreciation you apply to Shakespeare, and this is one of them. You can see it as a simple parable about not hankering after what you can’t have. But it’s also a complex illustration of poignant darknesses – an Anne-Boleyn style sacrifice of the self to ambition, the fatal attraction of unequal, unrequited love, the fate of the second woman in a certain kind of relationship. It could also be a whole thesis on the inadvisability of giving up that much of your fundamental self for a relationship. Needless to say, the Disney version has none of the above subtext whatsoever.
No. of times you can sit through the movie without losing your mind: 2. Be warned that it has spawned sequels involving the mermaid's daughter and mother.

6. Rapunzel, I like! Apart from anything else, there’s something very cool about your fate being decided by a cabbage. This Pantene princess had spirit. She let a man into her room secretly and provided the means herself. And after the wicked witch blinded the guy, she said screw you wicked witch and went after him anyway. Disney's fairly recent interpretation of Rapunzel, Tangled, is a great version, too.
No. of times you can sit through the movie without losing your mind: 7

7. My favourite is Beauty. This is the only one that is a true romance and necessarily has a more detailed male lead. Beauty had work to do – she was not strictly a princess. She had chores, a job and human affection for people other than her prince. She found herself put on a difficult path and stuck to it, being brave when she had to be. She gave the beast a chance, unlovely though he was in face and character and unashamedly so. And before you could say Stockholm Syndrome, the beast let her go with no conditions attached. She returned of her own free will. They lived happily ever after.
No. of times you can sit through the movie without losing your mind: 7

The grapes of wrath

Recently I made myself unpopular by spurning a bottle of Grover’s La Reserve as “singularly undrinkable”. What I meant of course was that I didn’t like it, but in the manner of wine-drinkers dangerous with little knowledge, I made it a problem with the wine. That’s just the tip of the personality disorder.

I can’t remember when wine, for me, went from being the thing you drink at Christmas in the wrong glasses to being what you drink, period. For that matter, I couldn’t tell you when or why my “hard drink” of choice became rum and coke or gin and tonic. I’ve never been a vodka person. Then one day it was all about wine.

I didn’t even have the excuse of being in the thick of the “wine revolution”; it just happened. Suddenly I had wine racks and bottles that meant more than “red or white”. I spent ages in wine boutiques picking them out. I courted eviction by rearranging bits of my landlord’s kitchen so I could store them properly. I worried about them in Dubai’s summer humidity. I changed my food habits to accommodate them. I did a lot of research and became insufferable on the subject, especially after a few glasses of it. I got caught up in it all for a while, until the sheer number of moving parts tired me out.

When you thought you’d finally grasped the grapes, you discovered unpronounceable Hungarian varietals. Just as you got some insight into the intricacies of France’s wine-growing regions and untangled them from the broader strokes of Napa Valley, along came an Argentinean Malbec, a Spanish Rioja or a German Riesling. Australia is even larger than France and New Zealand may be small, but it’s prolific. Then India joined the fray. When South African and Lebanese friends threatened to stop inviting me, I decided to give it a rest. They gave really good parties.

There was also the constant guilt that no wine enthusiast will admit to, the feeling that if you really liked the taste it had to be sub-standard. Whenever I started feeling particularly affectionate towards one – a certain South African Pinotage comes to mind – I would abandon it in a hurry without looking too closely at my reasons. Come to think of it, that bears close resemblance to other parts of my life as well, so perhaps I shouldn’t try shoving it off on to all wine-drinkers.

I now work with the fundamental truth of “I like it, I like it not”. The fancy language work I can do all on my own, and with a glass of water if necessary. Sometimes I just drink the syrup that somebody’s uncle made from apricots. I’m a better person for it, too. Occasionally, the snottiness I imbibed with the more difficult Bordeaux and horrifyingly mature Burgundies gets the better of me and I annoy a few friends, as above, but mostly I’m very relaxed, scrupulously agreeing with whatever my hosts think of their wine.

My fascination with the deliciously metaphorical concept of terroir has endured, though. And wine glasses, I love them, particularly the large works of art in which ruby liquid can swirl like dervishes, releasing entire Impressionist landscapes. I love that bouquet, the first multisensory tasting. A fresh bottle of wine is the calm of my flat before a party, warm light on wood, the pure sound of Leonard Cohen on my Linn before it turns into something louder, tea lights burning in a Zen holder that makes them look like they’re floating in the air, just as I am suspended in the solitude. This then, is probably the attraction for me. The rum and coke is always a noisy night out, but wine is personal. All the more reason, I suppose, for keeping my judgmental reflections to myself.

#ThankYouSteve

That's one of the trends going around on Twitter this morning, asking you to tweet if you're holding an Apple product.

Well I am, as I have ever since I started using a computer a million years ago. As with any important relationship, I object to many things about Apple. I am constantly irritated by the foibles that I may or may not have thought were cute at the start. But I have no desire to leave, nor any fundamental doubts about them. Beneath the appearance obsession and the posturing that they've lately taken to doing, it's still about the good product. I own both a PC and a Mac. I've messed about with Linux. I've owned a Windows phone, an Android one and an iPhone. A Sony mp3 player, as well as an iPod. When all is said and done, I think the Kindle is way better than the iPad for digital book reading – but that's about it. And so I say a heartfelt "Thank you Steve".

There could not be a better orbituary for the man than the old Apple ad.

"Here's to the crazy ones.
The misfits, the rebels
The troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes,
The ones who see things differently.
They're not fond of rules
And they have no respect for the status quo.
You can quote them, disagree with them
Glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can't do
Is ignore them.
Because they change things.
They push the human race forward.
And while some may see them as the crazy ones,
We see genius.
Because the people who are crazy enough
To think they can change the world
Are the ones who do."

Written by Craig Tanimoto or Rob Siltanen or Ken Segall, or all three together, depending on where you get your information from. Anyway, they were all in the creative department of Chiat/Day and it was 1997. One of them also named the iMac.