July 28th, 2005
Phone Entry
» motherhood
What’s with the phone that attracts the kids so dearly? Is it the buttons, the lights or the fact that we adults use it too often? I was at Takashimaya the other day, and saw one baby happily playing with the mobile phone in the stroller while the mom happily shopped around without any stress. That was what I would do too, shove the kid my hand phone if she starts crying and I need to pacify her immediately. If the hand phone fails to distract her, I guess nothing else would (well, except for milk milk, which I can’t simply pull up my blouse and bear it all in public with a wailing kid attracting so much attention).
I have bought a plastic toy hand phone too. This fake is to distract her from the real ones we are using and to prevent them from early retirement. It has buttons and makes all kinds of funny sounds when you press them, just like the real one, and much more fanciful. But somehow, children could differentiate it from the authentic ones. Maybe because they don’t see us talking into the fakies, so they don’t deserve so much affection.
I have also noticed that Yauyau have been very sensitive to the ringing tones lately. When the phone rings or the beep beep sound for SMS is heard, she becomes excited and points towards the phone. She will make sure someone answer the phone. Some kind of routine and order, I guess.
Finally, I must really apologise to one of my ex-colleague, Able. His phone entry happens to be the first on my list, and because of that, Yauyau has been making numerous phone calls to him. I have cancelled many of her attempts to call Able, but I am sure some made through. I have not received any complaints from Able yet. I have not keep in touch with him for years. Maybe he has changed his number, maybe he decided to ignore this number. Hopefully he didn’t imagine me as some prankster or a desperate (married) woman trying to contact him.
July 28th, 2005 at 5:52 pm
Looks like children go throug more or less the same stages. Jayden’s fetishistic obsession about phone has lasted 2/3 of his life now! And he prefers the real thing anytime. Tsk, headache.
July 30th, 2005 at 4:04 am
Luck Heng has the same interest in phones.
We actually found a replica of a mobile that looks 80% like the T610 I am holding, complete with a nice photo as the wallpaper. Too bad, either he noticed that the photo was a landscape photo instead of his face, or he can actually distinguish between real buttons vs the rubbery ones on the replica, he simply rejected it after holding on to it for a few seconds. Luckily we tested it on him in the store before purchasing.
A tip on the “calling the first person on the phone list” problem: create a dummy entry with the name “Aadummy” or “Aaaaaaaa” with no phone number.
July 30th, 2005 at 2:41 pm
Aiyoh, Declan has the same fetish… I bought him a fake Ericsson, exactly the same model like his dad, but he didn’t like it and throw it far far when we give it to him. All along, he likes to play with my samsung, so I naively thought I should buy a fake samsung, flip phone for him. I did, and again, he don’t give 2 hoots to that fake samsung either and prefers to meddle with mine…
He has send my GPRS bill shooting up as he always like to press that button which will activate the GPRS.. he has dailed 999 before… he has made nuisance calls to a couple of friends, he has switched off my phone and by me not realising the phone is off, he may have driven away some of my businesses! OMG…..
Yeah I’m scratching my head and asking the same question too, What’s with kids and mobile phone??
July 30th, 2005 at 5:22 pm
The dummy number sounds like a great idea! Thanks for that suggestion.
And seems that they are able to press the right combinations to activate the various functions or press the right buttons to call everybody.
July 31st, 2005 at 2:37 am
yup i’ve a dummy number too.. it’s “a” n the number’s “*” lol