It's ALIVE, it's ALIVE....

Miracle of miracles!

My mobile phone has returned, Lazarus-like, from the dead.

I do wonder, though, if, like Karel Čapek's Lazarus, it will be utterly fucking useless from now on. (One of Čapek's short stories portrayed the post-resurrection Lazarus as having such a fear of dying again that he had become a hopelessly dysfunctional hypochondriac.)

I suppose I can credit my prompt action for its surprising salvation. I fished it out of my mug of tea in approximately half a second, immediately shook the surplus liquid off it, removed the battery and SIM card, dried the terminals with tissue.... and blew gently over the keyboard, in the hope that my warm breath might speed the evaporation of any tea that had found its way into the inner workings (the "kiss of life" indeed). Then, racking my brains as to what else I could do to enhance its chances of survival, I placed it in front of a fan for a couple of hours (although I worried that, in the near-100% humidity that prevailed last night, this probably wasn't doing a lot of good). Later, I hit on the idea of laying the body and the battery on the cover of my laptop (while switched on) to provide some gentle heating. I even managed to rummage out an old sachet of desiccant (probably long since past any usefulness) from one of my camera bags.

Things didn't look promising when I checked on its state of health first thing this morning; but the battery was completely dead. After an hour or so on charge, the screen was active again - but the SIM card was not being recognised. A good shake and a quick removal & reinsertion sorted that out, and it appeared to be fully functional again. Gosh, I even got a text message from last night. The buttons are still alarmingly 'squelchy' though, so it is still mightily difficult to use. I am hoping that each hour it spends in the familiar warmth of my pocket will improve its performance a little more.

A lucky escape. A timely warning. I have been meaning to get a new phone for..... oh, a little over a year now, but it's always such a hassle here (expect a sequence of 'China rant'-type posts on this soon!). I really must get down to it this weekend.