Fizza March 7, 2005

Tags: technology , humour

href="/tag/food">food notwithstanding my endless implications that I couldn’t even cook daal and she owed her glowing face to the magic of washing it with mineral water twice a day. Since I have a history of meeting Martians when I travel, I bore her special appearance in life as part of my hopeless fate.

Upon landing, she asked for my contact. I gave her my e-mail address and she gave me her cell phone number. The next day, she called. I immediately recognized her number. Afraid she might invite me to a culinary exhibition in Peru or Kazakhstan, I ignored the call. For future reference, I saved her number by the name of ’Freaky Auntie’.

She never called again but three days later, I received an e-mail from her in which she told me she was still recovering from the jet lag. "Jet lag?", I asked myself in bewilderment. She had traveled from Karachi to Abu Dhabi. GMT had decreased by one teensy weensy hour for crying out loud! You would only jet lag if you were a clock. Maybe she was the Big Ben in her previous life. I didn’t bother replying. Who would?

Anyway, I deleted her e-mail and moved on to the next. It was from my sweetest cousin. His message requested me to record my birthday on his calendar so he could receive an electronic reminder on that date every year in case he forgot it. Wow! Who was he kidding? We were great friends and had clung to each other through thick(est) and thin(nest). He had been to every single birthday party of mine or paid a casual visit when I didn’t celebrate the day. Now all of a sudden, to remember one exclusive date out of the three hundred and sixty five (or six) useless days a year, he required artificial intelligence? Nevertheless, I had to sympathize with his gender. Since men are genetically programmed to forget dates, I gave in.

I owed my femininity for never missing someone’s birthday, and thought all my girlfriends felt the same about themselves until they sent me similar requests. Funny there were no birthday reminders during the time we were in school but they used to be up my a... ankles weeks in advance warning my wallet of an upcoming treat. Agreed they all went their separate ways but it’s not like they worked for the US government. I can’t recall what the e-mails precisely stated but to me, they meant, "Your birth date is occupying too much space in our random access memory cells." So much for I’ll-be-there-for-you’s! The sentence felt like an eternal assurance during slumber parties. With time, it became nothing more than a theme song from a popular sitcom. Oh well! Perhaps I was being ultra-paranoid and making a molecule out of an atom. What was the big deal? They just thought they needed to make me feel special. I thought they needed to add walnuts into their diets. Anyhow, I responded to all those e-mails.

Once these requests stopped coming, I started to get SMS.ac invitations. I felt special the first time I received such an e-mail, because I thought the kindness of a friend made her reserve an account for me. I visited the website, signed up too, but it turned out, the service wasn’t available in the UAE. In the weeks that followed, I received 129121980 invitations from different people asking for the same thing, "Join SMS.ac, so that 129121980 people could SMS you at no cost!" Of course I no longer felt special and now felt stupid for feeling special in the first place. Since my ISP didn’t support the service, I never joined the network. Hence, I began getting second invitations from every one of the 129121980 who had invited me previously; then third, and finally fourth. That totaled up to 129121980 x 4 e-mails altogether. Sue me if you think I’m exaggerating! The irony here was that these 129121980 enthusiasts who had generously contributed to my Yahoo! Mailbox, never ever bothered to fill my outdated Nokia cell phone’s inbox with a single text message. If they were so desperate to SMS me, why didn’t they?

I can reach two conclusions with the above information. Firstly, God bless Yahoo! Mail for increasing storage capacity. Secondly, God forbid anyone has friends like mine, who all have the memory of a goldfish when it comes to my birthday and who won’t ever SMS me unless it’s free.

The day I turned 240 months, my family wished me. My grocery man of ten years wished me. My neighbor’s dog wished me (or just really disliked my perfume). I got a few phone calls but none of them were from my so-called forever friends who pretended to work in the Pentagon. I signed on to MSN. Some of my contacts were ’Online’. Some were ’Busy’. Some were going to ’Be Right Back’. Most of them were ’Away’. But none of them messaged. I quickly changed my nick to ’Birthday Girl’. Suddenly windows began popping up. I was greeted. Some used emoticons of the cake, the wrapped present and the red rose, as though I had turned two instead of twenty and would dribble over the computer graphics. Anyone would rather get a withered flower as a belated birthday gift than a pretty animated one from someone who’ll wish them the same day of their birthday, but only after seeing their nick or receiving a birthday alarm. Someone who’ll quickly go back to being ’Away’ or ’Busy’ after a "Hi", "Happy Birthday!" and "Talk to you later!". ’Later’ meaning next year after he/she sees my nick again or ’later’ meaning never if I didn’t sign on.

I checked my e-mail. All my e-greetings were from those who I thought suffered amnesia and had thus asked me to fill their birthday calendars. All, except one:

"Dear Fizza,
I met you on a flight from Karachi. I hope you remember who I am. I remember you very well and also remember your birthday. Happy Birthday. May you’re showered with all the happiness in the world. Did you get my SMS? Jeeti raho.
Almaas"

I was astonished and ran to get my cell phone. It was buried somewhere under my pillow so I didn’t hear it beep upon receiving the SMS. There was one new message. I checked it. ’Happy Birthday’ appeared on the screen. ’Sender: Freaky Auntie’. A sudden rush of guilt poured inside me but I also felt really flattered. I went back to the computer and replied.

“Dear" ... I couldn’t refer to her as ’Freaky Auntie’ so I deleted ’Dear’ and started again.

"Salam,
Thank you!!!! I cannot believe you remembered! Of course I remember who you are. You won’t believe it. I can cook daal now. Even chawal! By the way, I don’t recall what mineral water it was. Evian or Oasis? Hoping to hear from you soon!
Regards,
Fizza"

I had one new message the next time I checked my e-mail. I clicked on ’Inbox’ expecting to uncover the secret behind a flawless face but there was another e-mail. It was from my sweetest cousin. He was creating an address book so he could delete my e-mail address from his brain and save it on an online corner.