Aviva Kidd (dot) com

Not much happening this week, except I have a Mandarin SAC tomorrow that I should be cramming for, so obviously I’m blogging instead. Thankfully I have also acquired a new mobile phone (that’s “cell phone”, my USian friends) in the last 24 hours, and already it’s paid for itself in a purely procrastination-enabling capacity. The handset itself is swoon-coloured purple, and I’d just decided to call it Boris when I belatedly remembered that naming every electronic device in my family’s possession was not the done thing, despite Waldemar the TV Remote’s diode flashes of protestation.

So yes, I am now out of the realm of black and white mobile telephony, and with the help of various patiently exasperated friends, have since discovered how to send a predictive text message (no more onerous button mashing for me) and how to exchange files via bluetooth, both of which are not to be superseded by my realisation of the vital difference between “normal” and “silent” mode (one of those means you get dissed for having a crappy ringtone and/or get kicked out of class, while the other is a test of patience for the person trying to call you as you ignore your handset’s steadily increasing vibrations in favour of looking for examples of cataphoric reference in Virginia Woolf excerpts in gratitude for your teacher not kicking you out of class after that abrupt explosion of Zelda theme music from within the vicitnity of your pocket).

All of this makes me worry that I’ll become one of those wan-skinned, shrivelled-up creatures unable to turn their mobile off for fear of losing contact with people or no longer being able to listen to the comforting hum of its CPU thing. Yesterday’s paper to the rescue! One of the fantastically trashy lifestyle liftouts informs me of the existence of nomophobia.com, a website that gives advice to aforementioned shrivelled up creatures or generally anyone who has a fear of switching off. Unfortunately their pages seem a little too sparse for the truly phobic, so I suggest a twelve step group (or a 17 step group, because 17’s a cooler number). Maybe come graduation.