Day 153: Frantic

I'd been looking forward to today. A couple of days after I lost my iPhone, I figured out that we'd be back in Kuala Lumpur probably on this date and I'd finally be able to buy a replacement, which was my number one priority for the day. Popped out quickly for our typical Malaysian breakfast of roti canai and kopi (total bill - $2.75 for 4 roti and 2 drinks).

From here I headed directly to the fancy shopping malls of downtown Kuala Lumpur. I had a list of authorised Apple resellers to visit, since I wasn't really willing to buy a $1400 iPhone from a guy in the street for obvious reasons. I had to wander aimlessly for an hour firstly, because shops in KL don't open until 10am.

The first store I visited had no stock, and wouldn't have stock for a couple of weeks. I tried another store, much the same story. Third and fourth stores came and went, again no stock of the iPhone 7 Plus. Store number five had stock of the 32GB model, but that wouldn't work for me as I need more storage than that (my phone backup alone is 30GB, before I put any music on there). Stores six, seven and eight also had no stock - some thought they might get some this afternoon, but it was basically the luck of the draw.

Defeated, footsore and very sweaty, I retreated back to the hotel. We organised the washing and had some lunch at a nearby Vietnamese stall, before heading out again. There were two more shopping malls I wanted to try, and one of them was an IT-specific mall which sounded hopeful. It's six floors tall, and the stores on the third, fourth and fifth stores all had no stock.

Finally I got to the store on the sixth floor and they had two phones left - a 32GB model, and a 128GB model which was what I wanted. Unfortunately, it was the pink one, which was not what I wanted. I'm not a believer in fate, God, karma or any other unseen force, but I really felt this was a test from the universe. The burning desire for an iPhone, versus the burning desire to not be judged for having a pink phone. We are heading for Myanmar tomorrow morning and won't be back for several weeks - can I wait that long for a phone? I spent hours and hours walking around in 33 degree weather - do I want to waste that? It's pink. I can put a case on it! I've never had a case on a phone before and I think they look ugly.

I crumbled.

I bought the pink phone.

And besides, as I'll be pointing out to people for the next 2 years - it's not pink! Apple call it "Rose Gold", so that's what I'll stick with. And it's not actually as pink as I feared - it's more the colour of pink champagne than pink highlighter.

We celebrated with a brief visit for Shandos to H&M, then visited a cafe for a nice smoothie before retreating to the hotel. Dinner was of course at the eat street, but I ordered a Hainanese chicken rice (Malaysian speciality dish) which was a little disappointing. Can't win em all I guess. Picked up the laundry and headed back to install/restore my phone.

Had a very late night when my phone bricked itself at about 10pm (it was stuck on the boot screen and was unrecoverable). Managed to get things going again but it required a full factory reset and reinstall, which took about 4 hours including download time. Oh well, it's another day of travelling tomorrow so I can sleep then.En savoir plus