So I found these two babies whilst clearing out some stuff in my bags couple of weeks back, and boy, was I surprised.
Maybe because I wasn't expecting to find them amongst a pile of books and clothes that I hadn't looked at in a long while. but there they were, both of them in one of those pouch bags bought from Daiso, together with another third phone which I had particularly liked when it was first introduced to me, and which I was a little sad for when it had to be decommissioned to make way for a new phone.
Seeing these two brought me a sense of nostalgia that I didn't know I had.
Not so much the use of the phones themselves, but the places where them two had been.
I remember the excitement when I first got the Nokia- it ran on the 3G network, making auto-roam so much easier. It didn't matter where I was calling from- I could now call a landline from nearly anywhere in the world without having to worry whether the network could sustain it or otherwise.
Happier yet, Japan had jumped onto the 3G network not too long before, and now I didn't have to switch to Docomo or another network when making a call home whilst transiting at Narita International Airport.
This phone was the one that went with me to Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego and New York City.
I'm not sure if it went with me anywhere else.
Maybe Bangkok, in 2011.
Or maybe it was the LG Lollipop phone that went.
Things get kind of blur between 2009 and 2011.
But I know the Lollipop was with me in 2012, as was the Blackberry, which went with me in April of that year to Taiwan.
I actually liked the Blackberry.
Not for the stiff business-like formality that its image presented, but the fact that it had a physical keyboard, and buttons whose touch I fancied. It had (surprisingly) rather adorable looking fonts too.
How long I used the Blackberry I too cannot remember- it might have been about a year, a year over, maybe.
But I know I used the gear until the buttons fell off.
By then, however, I was more than ready to change the phone- primarily because it wasn't compatible with Facebook anymore, and in any case, the BB was really more of a handheld computer/word-based piece of equipment, excellent for messages and emails but terrible for social media, visuals, camera functions and everything else.
So off it went.
And a (second hand) Samsung Galaxy III came in.