Saturday, July 08, 2006

Deja vu all over again


Blue Lagoon

Cheers, everyone! Here I was scratching my head trying to think of something inspirational for the blog and I quickly reached Writer's Block - only three days into it and already I hit a wall? So I cleaned out my wallet, as you do. (You know, all those ATM receipts and scraps of paper with phone numbers, and half remembered names of people you should remember because you once bothered putting their phone number on a piece of paper...)

There was my aunt's mobile phone number! One that I hadn't transferred into the mobile's handy dandy phone book. I typed in her name and number, and quickly and proudly sent her a perfectly typed text message, "This is ian's mobile!" OK, so I haven't quite got the hang of CAPS yet. Just as fast, the reply turned up: "I think u have wrong number." (Hmm, maybe it wasn't her number after all? Or she changed numbers at some point? Would my aunt be tech savvy enough to text "u" when she means "you"?)

After dinner I rang her on the regular phone - and it had been her. She'd figured it wasn't me because... "Ian doesn't have a mobile."

Dammit. I've had the rotten thing for two weeks now and I've sent messages to everyone I know with a mobile - but no one is replying because they don't realize it's really me, or it might be a junk call, or they might get a virus, or somesuch. Someone, please ring me! Otherwise how else do I test if my ringtones work, dammit?

Anyway, while my aunt and I were on the (real?) phone, we shared several old and new instances of deja vu. One involved a friend of mine who'd once asked me to duck out and post some business envelopes containing bills for the customers of his florist shop. I recognised one of the addresses as being a house directly opposite my place of work, but a good two suburbs away from his shop, which is why he was posting it.

"Don't put a stamp on that one," I said. "Leave it with me and I'll put it in their letterbox on my way home from work tomorrow."

"No," he replied. "Just post it with the others."

(Did he not trust me to remember? Highly likely. And I'd probably have forgotten it in the depths of my backpack, knowing me...) I decided it wasn't worth arguing, so I posted it.

The next day, as I was walking home from work, I found that still-sealed envelope, now with its stamp cancelled by Australia Post, lying in the street! So I had to pick it up and deliver it to their letterbox myself... "Spooky!", as Dame Edna would say.

Which brings me to the wacky deja vu anecdote that I was going to use for this blog entry! And, typically, I've waffled on far too long, so maybe now I'll just save up the story of the freaky-little-old-man-with-Coke-bottle-glasses for another time...?

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