I ate my words...

Mood: Very good mood indeed

My brother has been asking me to get him a Nokia N70. I always tell him off saying, 'Why do you want a phone like that??? Are you an executive??? What do you need an expensive mobile phone for? You get a phone for its features because you need them but if you don't, then sod the idea!'

You see, I have never really been a phone fanatic. I have always chosen the cheapest, most affordable phone available when getting one. I only need it for texting and voice calling. Nothing else, really. But then it happened. My good old friend Anne has been encouraging me to get a monthly subscription from a mobile phone network that works well in my area. For two years, I dismissed the idea. I thought it was always more economical to use 'pay-as-you-go' (in other countries including The Philippines, this is called 'pre-paid') and so I would get a £10 voucher regularly from the shop which I thought was making me save money. But I restricted myself so much that with 'pay-as-you-go', I couldn't phone my husband because it would cost me so much per phone call. I would pay for each use of the phone so it was very seldom that I ever used it for phoning people. But after summing it all up, I realised that I was actually spending as much as £50 each month and that only included texting! So I started to look at other offers. I found out that mobile phone companies offer to give you a free mobile phone, a monthly fee of as low as £15 giving you enough airtime minutes and texts for a month plus a surprisingly low rate for international texting, less that half of the text rate for 'pay-as-you-go'! I know that sometimes this could be deceiving so I inquired more. Then the best thing was right under my nose - the rates include VAT!

This, my friends, made me decide to get a Nokia N95 for free with a montly subscription of 1000 texts and 400 voice call minutes. Not bad for £30, eh? I ate my words. What do I need a N95 for? Am I an executive? Why didn't I sod the idea the first instance? I didn't need an expensive phone! Well, yeah, I am not an executive. I don't need the camera on my phone or the radio or the video facility. But it is free! So I grabbed it! Ha!

No, I haven't told my brother yet. If I do, he'll throw back at me my own words or worse, he'll ask me if he could have my N95. So I will keep it a secret for awhile. And yes, I do feel bad about it.