E-ZY Does It

It was either the NOKIA E63 or the prospect of accelerated hair loss.

But just like any other story on stress-induced hair loss, it begins with a love story.

And this love story began 25 lbs., 32 inches and a hundred thousand or so hair strands ago.

After slaving away as a corporate peon for several years, I finally decided to ditch the drudgery of a nine-to-five schedule, the horror of neckties and pleated pants, and the recurrence of my irritable bowel syndrome to enter the monthly paycheck-free world of entrepreneurship. (Little did I know that entrepreneurship would just exacerbate my irritable bowel syndrome. Oh, well, one out of three ain’t bad).

Being an entrepreneur simply means two things. First, my sole investment is in my laway. Second, it is now physically impossible for me to secure a loan with any reputable bank because laway is not an acceptable collateral.

As my wife is wont to remind me, I struggle, ehem, juggle several ‘jobs’ (And it looks like I have to add a bit more jobs to my resume if I plan to finance the college educational plan of my five-month-old daughter): I am a real estate developer, a magazine editor, a newspaper columnist, a television, events and wedding host, a sometime actor, an erstwhile yoga instructor and television show producer, and after Jessica Zafra relinquishes her throne, world conqueror.

I suspect that I am an aberration of quantum physics: I am the result of several parallel universe lives squooshed into one universe. It is either that or that I am schizophrenic (No, I’m not. Yes, you are). And I have lived in this roller-coaster-paced, multi-tasking “what job am I doing now?” fashion for the past 56 dog years (Well, I have been working like a dog). As a result of all this work, I have rapidly evolved into one big, middle-aged, cholesterol-laden ball of stress.

And if it wasn’t for my love affair with Nokia mobile phones, my scalp would have resembled a solar battery as of this writing.

I have been intimate with Nokia mobile phones for 10 years now. My then virginal thumb grew callused with text messaging on the Nokia 5110. But that was merely an initiation as I moved up to the Nokia 6150. Then I made that exponential hop, skip and jump to the Goliath flip-top that was the Nokia 9200. That was until I finally made my way to the love of my life that was the Nokia 9200’s younger, sexier sibling, the Nokia 9500.

However, as Finnish fate would have it, Nokia marketing executives several years ago chose me as one of the fledgling entrepreneurs to bequeath with a Nokia E61 mobile phone. Agh. I felt like I had to choose between getting a right appendage or a left appendage. My original mobile phone, the Nokia 9500, had loomed large in my life and in my pants pocket, but it shared many similar features with the Nokia E61. But for an on-the-go entrepreneur like myself, the Nokia E61 had a compact configuration that slipped inconspicuously into my pants pocket. My mobile phone would no longer be the subject of a double entendre. That was the clincher. I reluctantly bade farewell to my Nokia 9500 and have made the Nokia E61 my common-law for the past three years.

I admit I have been tempted to stray from my beloved E series. Particularly with those phones that are splashed with bright, shiny colors or are pimped out to blow away your eardrums or that can transform into anthropomorphic robots that plan to take over the galaxy. But my Nokia and I, sigh, we’ve been through nine infernal circles with nary a singe: I remember every excruciating task that I’ve pumped into your to-do list, I remember how we painstakingly built our 3,000-plus contacts list over time, and I remember how you’ve always been compatible with my laptop.

Damn you, Nokia, I just can’t quit ya. And I can’t risk the further hair loss either.

Now Finnish fate has found favor in me again and moved me two numbers up from the Nokia E61 to the more sophisticated Nokia E63. We had our good times, E61, but I just couldn’t resist the Nokia E63’s siren call. And her sleek blue frame. Sigh. My love story with the Nokia mobile phone is longer than a Pinoy teleserye.

Admittedly, the first few months with a Nokia E Series is like the first few, awkward months of marriage: It can be exciting, it can be slightly frustrating, and it takes getting used to. My no-look, dual-thumb dexterity with text messaging was now just as useful as a three-inch diskette, but the Nokia E63 has more than made up for it with her technological savvy. Aside from learning how to use both thumbs on the qwerty keyboard, the E series is an ideal phone for entrepreneurs-slash-potential victims of hair loss like me because they are built for business.

Nokia E63, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

1. Text to the max. Since I wear several hats, my Nokia E63 has been in essential in sending multiple messages to several people for business meetings or for blasting out text invites to everyone in my contacts list, which has roughly the same number of people in the Makati business directory. Believe you me, I have tested the limits of the Nokia E63 by sending out more than a thousand of the same text message over the course of a day. I am proud to say that my Nokia E63 survived the text brigade unscathed. And I also inadvertently helped my service provider meet their profit goals for several years.

2. We were made for each other. My Nokia E series mobile phones have been going steady with my laptop for the past five years. With the help of the Nokia PC Suite program, I’ve been synching information into my laptop then downloading it into my latest Nokia mobile phone ever since the Nokia 9210 made a bulge in my pocket. This feature of the Nokia mobile phones has allowed me to grow my contacts list, save and file thousands of text messages, keep a running list of new business ideas and magazine concepts, and archiving syrupy love notes that I wrote to my then girlfriend (now wife) that can now be used as fodder for young adult romance novels.

3. No escape. Ever since my Nokia 9200, I have been synching my calendar and to-do-list from my mobile phones into my laptop’s Microsoft Outlook applications. My whole itinerary, at least until the end of the Mayan calendar in 2012, has been plotted out on my Nokia E63. With my whole life uploaded into both my mobile phone and my laptop, the only excuse I can blurt out now if I miss a meeting, an appointment, a task or even a birthday is that the dog ate my phone. And my laptop.

4. Never down and out. There are those among us who will go into seizure once we enter Internet withdrawal. And since most of my jobs require me to be in a constant state of mobility, I remain seizure-free thanks to the Internet connectivity (and, for the sake of my bill, I hope to be accessing the Internet from a free wireless local area network (WLAN). Once I have internet access from my mobile phone, it is a multi-tasking jamboree: I can be on the way to a site inspection for our residential development project while concurrently approving layouts for the magazine, reviewing and editing word documents, spreadsheets for approval, researching Wikipedia for my column and (hehehe) updating my Facebook status (That is the business of feigning busyness).

But what really keeps my seizures at bay is the easy access to my e-mail accounts from the Nokia E63. The Nokia E63 allows me to log into and instantly reply to any of my multiple identities online: my Yahoo mail, my Gmail, my Hotmail, my office e-mail and my Yahoo messenger. With e-mail and messenger access, I have no escape from my managers, my business partners, my suppliers and my editors, which suits me just fine. That is, unless I get the umpteenth email from a Nigerian treasury official asking if you could help him transfer gold bullions to the Philippines.

With the Nokia E63, downtime is no longer a part of your vocabulary (and, sometimes, neither is sleep). And, in my lines of work, downtime costs money and bald spots.

But what is the most pleasing feature of my Nokia E63?

During my personal downtime (which is give or take three minutes), when I am not trying to earn enough money to support my baby’s college educational plan, I don’t use my mobile phone to listen to songs or play video games or to transform into a robot that will save humankind.

My favorite feature on the Nokia E63 is using the camera and video clip application, a feature that wasn’t present in the Nokia E61, to capture snippets of quality time with my wife and baby. Of course I can always use the camera feature to take pictures of our subdivision developments or the layouts of our magazine. But that’s all just business. However, when I turn my Nokia E63 into a digital brag book to show friends, family and random passersby how my bundle of joy becomes more adorable every day, that’s pure pleasure.

If I could, I would have the Nokia E63 surgically attached to an inconspicuous portion of my anatomy. My wife was actually cool to the idea, as long as I would give up another inconspicuous part of my anatomy.

Oh, well, at least I still have some of my hair.