Espionage

Been wanting to change my mobile for a while. Somehow, after 1 and a half years of being with me, my Nokia 6230 seems to eat up its full battery charge in less than a day, with less than 2 hours' worth of calls. A new battery didn't seem to help.

I've been eyeing the new Sony Erricson W800i, not because of its bold orange tones, but because hey... it has a 512M memory stick, a walkman and 2M camera. So, scouting around, i found that its RRP was RM1,999.

Ask around harder, and it's RM1,790 for a local warranty.

Go to www.lelong.com.my and you can find "parallel imports" for RM1500++.

So that's where I got it. Yah yah... I hear you saying I'm kiam siap, kedekut, skint flint... what the heck! 2 of my old phones, 3 phones ago, old Siemens phones were all courtesy of Lelong.com.my!

So I called up this guy. His name was "Rock". Met him outside Mc Donald's benches in 1 Utama. He brings up this huge bag with many phones inside and a black plastic bag with my new phone. We chat, check the phone out, it's all cool.. and did the transaction. He even took my old 6230 for RM500. Other shops offered RM400! And my phone only had the original 32M card! This guy, he reveals, is a supplier for mobile phones, and "I got many sources", so says he. He guaranteed his phone "U got problem, you call me!"

So far so good. The only problem I had with the phone was that the manuals were in Polish. That's what you get for "parallel imports"!