The Deaf Post. Pardon? Pardon?? WHAT??

The phone E@L is travelling with is the E61i, for two reasons: a) he bricked Spikes's old iPhone the other week and he hasn't been in Singapore long enough lately to get down to SimLim square for someone to unbrick it, and b) the iPhone is only 2G.

Reason he dislikes the Nokia and prefers the iPhone: he can actually HEAR people when he is on a call on the iPhone. Its speaker is nice and loud. The Nokia's speaker is tiny and hard to locate precisely over his delicate shell-like... He has to press it so hard against his head that he frequently turns the stupid thing off. What's with the on-off button being on the face of the phone, right next to the speaker? Others with this phone have had the same problem.

ALl this week, when talking on the phone he's had trouble. He's been saying, "Speak up! Shout! I can't hear a freaking thing on this shit phone!"

So out for drinks last night with two of HK's Tech Gurus - HKPhooey and Spike - naturlich E@L checked out what pocket communication devices they were using. HKP was on the latest Blackberry and Spike had 2 iPhones with him! (No questions from anyone about this.)

Neither could come up with a convincing sales pitch for either choice, except that Spike wants to write an iPhone app like the farting thing that kept him so amused for most of the evening when he wasn't double fisting the jambon iberica and shouting at women passing on the footpath below. A successful app - sell a few million at 99c each and retire is the plan - would enable him to import his own pigs and avoid hassles with middle-men, like the chef at Uno Mas.

So anyway, WHY can't E@L hear anything on the E61i? Is it an E61i problem or an E@L problem?

Today he was at a health screening clinic with his employment. People were getting complete insurance check-ups, including a simple hearing test. Naturlich E@L asked for a freebie; hearing test that is.

"Sure, no problems," they said in Japanese (it is a Japanese clinic in HK).

Result: that Led Zeppelin concert in 1973 has a LOT to answer for... All the high frequencies are gone, lost forever in the cacophony of conversations from all around. E@L finds it really hard to follow what people are saying as soon as there is any background noise.

Bummer. Still, it doesn't help him decide what phone to buy next. One thing though, it will have to be a LOUD one.

E@L