Tuesday 10 September 2013

silver lining

My heart broke...

Moments after being upside-down watching in slow motion my phone dropping 130ft onto earth, and then hearing the phone smacked onto the ground.

I can only be thankful that it didn't hit anyone. Very thankful. So very thankful… and don't want to imagine what it could've been.

It was an interesting mind-over-matter situation how one can sober up in a blink of an eye mid-5G experience.

It was our last day in Copenhagen. It was a trip to celebrate our sixth year anniversary together. We were at Tivoli. We were on our second ride at the amusement park, the Vertigo to be exact.

Various thoughts went through my mind. When the ride ended and the attended handed me my phone, my heart numbed.

Oh my phone.

Thereafter days of roller coaster emotions, I consoled myself that I was on mobile phone-sabbatical.

That itself was an interesting experience which I will share in another post.

The high after that was knowing that my desktop recognised my iPhone.

The low immediately after that was that I had to unlock my phone, which I couldn't with the shattered screen.

I had hope.

What followed the next two days was my alarm going off in the morning and I couldn't switch it off.

But I still have hope to retrieve my data.

New phone searching started a few days before I plugged-in my phone to the desktop. Man, it is expensive to replace a phone that I didn't have insurance for.

But I couldn't think of going for anything else other than an iPhone 5. I was smitten. I've fallen in love. What I didn't realise, I was dependent.

A conversation with a friend asked me to try the Apple shop, and I managed an appointment with them over the weekend.

Almost a week into my mobile phone-sabbatical.

I was told by Apple Tech Support that I can get my screen replaced for a fee. I was over the moon to know that.

Just before I went to the store over the weekend I realise that whilst I knew that the screen was beyond repair, I thought the phone did well to survive the fall without a scratch; but little did I realise was that there is a slight dent in the back. Ouch, poor phone.

I must say, the acrylic glass case I had must've taken most of the impact, unfortunately I've not seen what it looked like after impact.

During my 15 mins wait, I observed a high number of phones (various iPhone generations) replaced at the Apple store. I later found out what high mark-up we pay when we get a new phone. I also thought to myself that there is a possibility that I will be getting a new phone.

It later transpired that for a small fee, rather than getting my screen replaced, I received a new replacement phone, easily half the price of a new iPhone.

Then, my heart broke, again.

Why you say? I'm getting a new phone (albeit with a small fee), what else could I ask for more? It wasn't the small fee that my heart broke; I accepted that I need to spend that money for what I wanted.

Unfortunately Apple store can’t back-up the information I had on my phone. That is what the iCloud is for. I guess you can imagine they have so many customers to attend to and to carry out back-up for every customer it is going to take forever. And there is also the possibility of data protection? I don’t know...

Of course I was thankful that I can get a new phone. What I didn't expect is that I was quite upset (internally) that I lost four months’ worth of data, photos, notes, and memories.

Arrgh...

Four months.

Four months, because it came up that the phone will restore from May 7th.

Anyways, four months...

...All because I didn't know how to use iCloud well enough.

...Because I didn't get my desktop sorted to do a backup. (The computer fan needed some attention, and it is now fixed).

Four months.

Made me realised how dependent we are on our technology.

I lost some notes I made recently on Notes.

***Update from where I stop drafting:

I was going to go on a spill on the story of my life, about the various thoughts I had that I needed to jot down. I was upset as you can imagine.

So what I didn't tell was I went to the Apple store on Saturday. After I left the store (with my new phone), the phone required Wi-Fi to restore but I couldn't use Wi-Fi as I was out and about. It was after when we finally got home at night that I noticed the phone hang asking if I wanted to restore with Wi-Fi or later. I couldn't do anything with the phone.

I could hardly sleep on Saturday night.

Upset that I was going to lose four months of stuff.

We went back to the Apple store on Sunday and all it required was a soft restart.

I started my draft of this post on Sunday morning before the visit to the Apple store.

After the soft restart and later when we have Wi-Fi to restore, I am thankful for iCloud. What I didn't realise was quite a number of things have been backed up onto iCloud.

The wonderful people at Apple, oh, so clever.

I still lost some information and memories. But it wasn't as bad.

I lost all my Notes.

Yes, I may not have all my 2,000+ photos; at least I have most of our expensive Copenhagen weekend photos (now made even more expensive with the phone replacement). I lost all our Copenhagen photos on the last day.

I still don't know how much was backed up onto iCloud as the phone is still being restored.

Lessons learnt, of course.

And I am in awe of the Cloud, or in this case iCloud.

***Update: I must give credit to TheOtherHalf for putting up with me for the past week, non-stop on everything about the phone.