Next station: Sham Shui Po’, the train was so noisy that I wanted to cover my ears. As my owner stepped out of the MTR station, I got wet because of a slow platter of rain. My internal GPS told me we were at Sham Shui Po Golden Computer Centre. My owner had been holding me very tightly since he dropped me 2 months ago. There were many people speaking but I didn’t know what the words meant. Google Translate said it’s foul language. What a sensory overloading trip!
My owner put me on a table and I saw a middle-aged man with clumsy hair wiping my face then putting on a new screen protector. My scar, the reason I had been in pain for a few months, was finally gone. After providing the service, that man went on smoking. ARGH. I wished I could wear a mask like my owner.
My owner never takes good care of me. He seldom restarts and updates me. What’s worse, he frequently powers me on and off and on and off. At night, when I am shut down and charged, he often turns me on again because of his instant wish to text his friends. That really disturbs my rest! After school, he clicks into the notifications immediately, unable to wait for a second. He uses me even when he is walking, and that’s why he dropped me. He changed the screen protector two months after I got hurt. My physical pain and his laziness anger me- he sent a message to his friend complaining about needing to go to Sham Shui Po. ‘Don’t own me if you are too busy to take care of me!’ I thought.
My anger with his irresponsibility as my owner reached the highest point, so I decided to play a trick on him. I disabled Outstagram the next day. My owner saw the Outstagram icon turned grey and screamed, ‘What’s going on? I need it NOW! He kept clicking the icon, but of course, it was of no use. That only made me get an itch. I thought he would have beaten me if the phone-dropping incident hadn’t happened. Anyway, he was just never able to wait.
I set a timer and decided not to enable Outstagram unless he started doing homework within 15 minutes. He was ‘Googling’ ‘how to enable Outstagram’ when 9 minutes were left. When 3 minutes were gone, I finally saw him picking up his pen and writing. At that moment, I wanted to enable Outstagram. However, my eyes and ears told me not to. My owner frowned and murmured, ‘This phone is too old! I want the newest version.’
I was furious and thought,’ Then why don’t you update me? I have been displaying thousands of notifications related to the urgent need for updating!’ I thus decided to keep Outstagram disabled. I didn’t care how my owner responded to this.
After focusing on homework for a few minutes, his disability to wait and control himself affected him again. This time, he gave up using me but used the web version of Outstagram on the computer. (I knew this because I’m connected to the computer and saw him typing the link.) I promptly sent an internal signal to the computer, telling it to disable the website. Instead of ‘This website is unavailable, the text displayed on the computer was ‘Wait.’ My owner reloaded and checked the page’s link address repeatedly. The computer told me that my owner was scowling and turning his pen. After a few minutes, I heard the sound of the computer shut down. I believed that my owner was going to be able to control himself.
As I predicted, he was trying to concentrate. He did his homework for half an hour, then took a break. (I knew this because of the sounds produced.) Then he went on to work for an hour. Then a break. My heart was softened, and I enabled Outstagram while setting an app timer of 20 minutes. After a while, my owner turned me on and saw the Outstagram icon returning to the original color. He looked a bit puzzled and clicked into the app’s settings. I saw a bright smile when my owner saw the app timer. Everything was right. I wish I had a mouth to smirk.
I didn’t know whether my owner would maintain self-discipline. Let’s wait.