“I sent in invitation and you did not accept that, Minakshi ma’m”, complained one of my very close friends over phone.
“But I have not received any invitation from you, Sunita. …and by the way, what was the occasion? Anyways, I would not have been able to go to attend the function. So…. ”, I tried to cheer her up.
I only have known of invitations for some celebrations or occasions so far in my life. She snapped me in between my sentences with giggle,” Ma’m, it was in BB and not for any function”.
BB? What on earth is that? After such long trial and tribulations, I now connect with friends through FB but never heard of BB. Generally, I prefer to avoid acronyms and love to say the full word or phrase or sentence while writing or speaking. So I was obviously not aware of the acronym “BB”.
Another round of giggle from her side and she clarified with pity that BB stands for Black Berry.
Yes, I do possess a black berry but what connection does that Blackberry have with sending some invitation? I was still not clear and she took the hint to explain in detail that I can use my Blackberry to chat on real-time basis or send photographs quickly or access to my e-mail account or browse through my FB account and so on…..
Wow, so many possibilities and I did not know that! Actually, very reluctantly, I accepted that Black Berry from my husband as I am a person who is not particularly very fond of accessories and a simple Nokia phone had been working perfectly fine for me. Secondly, there was no pressing need that e-mails were to be sent every now and then as I currently enjoy the new-found status of “full-time Housewife”. Thirdly and most importantly, I have phobia for complicated electronic gadgets.
Even the need to connect through BB to friends was not urgent but suddenly and surprisingly, I felt intrigued and I had that urge to know more about the possibilities. The moment I mentioned this to my husband, the initiation process started immediately (cooking for dinner could wait!) and my I-know-all eight-year old son also chipped in to throw in some piece of knowledge intermittently about how to use Blackberry effectively. (I must say, my little one has amazing knack for modern-day electronic gadgets)
After a crash course of few hours, I learnt how to send invitations to others to connect, how to accept invitations from others, how to upload pictures, how to chat, how to create profile ,sending e-mails or browsing FB account etc and voila, it is fun! (I do not know how to ping, though).
Equipped with such knowledge and a blackberry with international roaming facility, I went for winter vacation to my parents’ place with the kids this last December. Now that I can take picture and show it to friends immediately, I clicked unlimited number of pictures of my village and uploaded immediately to showcase my skill and in the process, my beautiful small village earned few praises! My children also wanted to wield the magic wand in front of their friends in the village and wanted them to listen to songs from You tube as many times and as many songs the friends requested(villages are no longer untouched by bollywood shockwaves but blackberry is still unheard of).
To make things worse, Chhutku had been completely consumed by the ‘Kolaveri – D’ effect and listened to it umpteen number of times to ward off boredom as Youtube.com was only a button away. Misti is just in the threshold of age when Justin Biber comes in dreams and songs sung by him were played a decent number of times!!
….and then tragedy struck! An sms from DU shook me up from this bliss one fine morning which said that my post-paid limit had been reached and the over-due amount was blinking at whopping and shocking AED 1727. Outgoing sms-es were not being delivered and outgoing calls were not allowed!!
Oh, my God, how is this possible? I made only a few phone calls from my ‘blackberry’ quite cautiously as I knew that International roaming was expensive – was my first reaction. Even after so frequent (and sometimes call duration is obnoxious when I speak to close friends to give them detail of my new shopping, haircut, Dubai sales, beach scene etc) calls to friends and relatives, the bill of usage of mobile has never reached beyond AED 500!! I actually took few long breadths to come back to normal heartbeats and with lot of hesitation sent an SOS to my husband.
An epitome of generosity (I mean that), he called up to assure me that an online payment had been made and I should enjoy the balance days of stay with parents without worrying about mobile bills. Even then, I was continuously trying to find a reason for such heavy-duty usage and DU only solved the mystery through another SMS informing me that now the charges for accessing internet while on international roaming has been slashed.
In a flash, I got the clue – accessing the You tube, the FB ,come under the phase “internet access” and does not come free of cost even if I possess a “black berry” and it becomes doubly expensive when on International roaming.
If only I knew this vital piece of information …….! But am I to be blamed for this ignorance? My husband and son (partly), who initiated me to this “blackberry” addiction, should have told me as a part of lessons! How irresponsible!! Since husband was away, I sent him a “BBM” holding him responsible for this damage (well, I still do not know whether BBM is free service or a paid one!).
Poor husband! He first had to bear the damage financially and now this accusation from the wife!
Children were instructed strictly to stay away from You Tube and I have not pressed the FB icon once, even mistakenly during the balance days of stay (except few BBM to my dear Husband). The pictures that were taken after the fiasco were uploaded once I came back to Dubai.
….and here comes my confession – I missed the fun of staying connected to FB or through BBM during those few days, folks!! Some addictions are bad for physical health and some addictions are bad for financial health - who understands that better than me ?
