I lost my phone!

Friends,

Thank you for texting me for the past six summers. However, we will no longer be in touch until I get a new phone, after I lost my old one to a robber three days ago.

Those who used to come through my phone for both makeup and pageant/fashion scriptwriting services will have to contact me here on Friendster if not on my laraduttallerariel@yahoo.com email addie.

I know that my phone was one of the obsolete models, but then I cherished it heartily for a good six years inasmuch as it held a lot of sentimental value. Matter of fact, I never ever once tried to change its casing for the love of vanity, or succumb to the temptation of replacing it --- against insistent suggestion of friends that I had better buy a brand-new unit.

Anyhow, I might be using my mom's phone in the meantime, and so I'd be using my Sun SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) card: 09322416430.

Here's the story of it all:

On June 18, I got off from work at 5AM. I crossed the street from Synergis building toward a jeepney awaiting its avid passengers, mostly Sykes employees dying to hit the bed in no time. The front seat was vacant and usually, when there's nobody beside the driver, I'd readily opt to get the chance for security reasons.

However, in that particular balmy Thursday morning, I was feeling a bit lonely, and I thought that being one of the passengers in the backseat would somehow perk up my mood. Hence my instant decision to hop into the back right away.

Our jeepney was turning on a pivot from MJ Cuenco Avenue, across CSCST (Cebu City College of Science and Technology), to Manalili Street when a guy in red shirt and denim short pants jitneyed like a commuting passenger.

There were about six of us aboard, and there's a space flanked between me and the next passenger towards the driver's seat. The "guy" got the seat. Across me was a fellow Sykes agent who, insensitive to something that was smelling fishy, pulled a cellphone out of his bag, turned it on and looked as though he was having fun listening to music through his earphone. Across each other, we were seated at the very rear of the jeepney.

The guy beside me crossed his fingers like a big Catholic fanatic, and then changed position to where the conductor is supposed to be. The next thing I saw was a long and glossy thingy right before my very nose, a knife he was holding plus such words and phrases as: This is a holdup... Driver, keep it steady... Give me your phones!

Without having second thoughts I gave my Nokia 3560, and the fellow across me had to plead for his SIM card to be excluded before the robber snatched his sophisticated gadget and leapt off, unfortunately not getting run over by the following vehicles in front of USP-Mabini.

On the night of the same day, en route to work, I took basically but not necessarily the same jeepney. For your information, there's only one regular ride running between Sykes and Colon-Carbon and it's the 03A-route. Having been traumatized by my early-morning experience, I didn't want to sit in the back again. Thank God, there's still one vacant space in the front and I was to sit beside the conductor trying to brighten up the lonely night of the driver.

I hopped into the front. The jeepney made a right turn on Bag-ong Dalan (out of MJ Cuenco Avenue), when the conductor glanced at the back to collect the passengers' fare and pronounced "holdup" at the driver, according to what he was seeing at the rear: Two robbers, each pointing a knife at the passengers. Sensing that both the driver and the conductor had noticed, the two holdup artists managed to get a lady Sykes employee's phone and jumped off at once.

What a bad hair day!

Ariel Allera