It's Not You, It's Me

Break ups are always hard, no matter how amicable there are always hurt feelings on both sides. On Saturday I made the difficult decision to end one of my longest-term relationships. I felt ashamed and disloyal but I set my shoulders and did what had to be done.

After many, many years of having a mobile with 3 (in fact, I was one of the first Perth customers to take up the service), I have traded them in for... well... an older model and now have that shiny spanking new white iPhone I had been dreaming about through Telstra.

I have to admit, I wasn't Telstra's winning customer service that made me change - in fact my calls to their service centre to see what kind of deals they would do to move two phones over from a competitor were lacklustre to say the least. After being incorrectly transferred to the billing department I finally had a lovely lady with a barely understandable accent tell me 'there's nothing they can offer at this time'.

We also had to wait nearly an hour to even get a customer service assistant in the store to see us and then a further hour before the deal was done. However, now my husband and I actually have signal and can make and receive calls, check emails and surf the web pretty much everywhere in the metro area. Pretty amazing right? (please sense the sarcasm)

I actually think the service in the telecommunications industry in Australia is pretty darn lacking, but I guess that's a conversation for another day.

What I want to know today is, who have you had to break up with? Like me do you feel disloyal when you change brands or shop at a competitors store or do you waltz between suppliers without a care in the world?

A New Addiction

I love a good fad as much as the next person and thanks to my brother-in-law on the weekend I discovered Words with Friends. Although essentially this game is just a high-tech new way of playing Scrabble it is surprisingly addictive.

I installed the app on my iPhone (although I think there are other ways you can play) initially using the free version although the ads that pop up between each move soon get annoying. I've already gone and bought the paid ad-free version (just $3.99 from iTunes).

Basically you can sign in with your Facebook or Twitter accounts or use your email address and either challenge friends, Twitter followers or complete strangers to a game.

These long-distance Scrabble games can be played over an hour or over a week and you can set the game to notify you when anyone you are playing makes a move so you can take your turn. You can also use the chat function to send messages to the person you are playing - essentially like free SMS if you are playing with friends.

It might not sound like much but my husband and I lost most of our Sunday afternoon trying to come up with ways to use a Z or a Q on a triple letter score square. So far I've resisted breaking out my king-sized professional dictionary I use for my journalism work but it's only a matter of time.

Are you also hooked on Words with Friends or is there something else you've found yourself addicted to this week?

New Product: iPhone Now in White

I am kind of glad I haven't got around to ordering my new iPhone 4 as Apple have just released the phone in white. Ever since I saw a white iPhone in an episode of Cashmere Mafia I had wished I had bought a white iPhone instead of a black one. Now it looks like I'll get my chance.