Male things

During our holidays in the Netherlands I was given an iPhone 4S. One without a simlock and without a SIM card. Once back in South Africa, I wanted to put my new SIM card into the new phone. But this new phone, so it turned out, only fits a very tiny “gnomisch” SIM card. A typically ‘made in China’ card. In Chinese factories, where 8000 tiny Chinese laborers worked through the night after a cup of tea and a biscuit, to manufacture this early launch April 1st product.

The SIM that fits my iPhone 3G is: ra-pa-pa, way too big to fit the 4S!

So what could I do, I tried it anyway. These actions were categorized as hopeless, but you still want to test whether your assumption is based on facts, right?

It didn’t fit.

Then I decided to lean backward in despair, because what else can you do? My sphere of influence has its limits. Furthermore I thought of the approximately zillion other things staring at me from my “Things-to-do” list.

But, I couldn’t get it out of my head, so I started searching on Google, then on YouTube and, on the latter channel, I watched videos of males’ hands and a few full-frame men, seriously- and sometimes even a little nervously, cutting and crafting. No value judgement whatsoever, but the story that men can’t do arts and craft with the children, are incapable of replacing a button on a pair of pants and being unable to wrap gifts? Written off in one fell swoop.

I snapped the computer shut and said to Joost:

‘Well, it seems there lies a trimming task ahead of us.’

And I thought, Steve Jobs might get sick of all this humourously turning in his grave. But anyway.

Joost said, "Are you sure you want to do it yourself?"

Apparently he believed that I would complete this task.

I noticed a bit of doubt in his voice. It’s a fact that my cutting career never progressed any further than cutting the children’s hair: A bit skew, oh no, a little skew again, etc.

But, the SIM card doesn’t need a clever cut, it just needs to be a little shorter.

I thought about alternatives, such as visiting a telephone retailer.

The thing holding me back is the following. When I buy a loaf of bread and ask:

"Can you please slice it?"

They will probably say, "Yes."

After all, the South African will never say he can’t. Moreover, slicing a loaf of bread is not exactly the most complicated job in the world, right?

If I then add a little warily:

"I'm in a hurry, do you have a bread slicer?"

They still say: "Yes, of course!

After that you might be waiting for at least 10 minutes before the waiter proudly shows you a higgledy-piggledy sliced loaf of bread. You think, my god, I'm glad I asked for a bread instead of a ham. Or for a cream cake. So that from now on people that attend your birthday parties will ask you, 'Self-sliced?’, instead of "Self-made?"

So, if I decided to visit a phone retailer to trim my SIM card, the salesman would probably ask me:

"Of course madam, how short would you like it to be?”

After which he disappears to return moments later with a SIM card with the size of a grain of rice.

Fortunately it isn’t my problem. It’s a bit like hammering nails into walls, randomly drilling holes and trimming the hedges.

The ultimate male thing.

(To be continued btw)