When I first arrived in Culiacan in 2010 I didn’t even have a cellphone. I left my flip phone in Canada as I thought it would be easy to get a new cellphone in Mexico. Back then I still didn’t have a resident visa yet and without that I couldn’t just walk into a store and get a phone or a plan. One of my Mexican friends came to the rescue. On a Sunday afternoon he took me to the home of a friend where I was absolutely astounded to see a room with shelves upon shelves of cellphones. Many pesos in cash later, I emerged with a state of the art Blackberry, never giving a thought as to who the cellphone or the plan was actually registered to.

To my credit I did bring my Dell laptop with me to Mexico. But the house where I was living didn’t have Wi-Fi so that was another major production getting that installed.

A year later I’m in Irapuato and want to get a phone chip. Not so easily done when I don’t have a clue as to who the phone or the previous is registered to. But a Mexican friend once again helped me out and we got it done.

A few months later I have moved to Guadalajara and need a new chip. Repeat performance of Irapuato.

Four years later I move to Mazatlan. When I go to Telcel I’m told that I can keep the number but to set up a plan they need to know the name of the registered owner of the cellphone and the previous plan. The friendly staff at Telcel accepted my story that it was an ex-novio and they were happy to change their files to indicate that I was now the registered owner of the cellphone.

While I’ve had the same cell number since 2011, I’ve gone through a number of cellphones. I usually change them every three years to update and get more memory. And I usually get these in the USA where the price is a lot lower than in Mexico.

On to computers. I never did like that Dell. I was only too happy to get rid of it and replace it with an Acer. And I loved that Acer! It broke my heart when I had to update. That time I got an Asus. What a disaster! It was a lemon from day one. Tech support at Asus told me to send it back and they’d replace it. But I was in Mexico and knew darn well I’d never see that replacement. So I put up with it until it died, unfortunately at the beginning of Covid. So now I’m stranded in Mexico with my cellphone as my computer.

When I finally arrived back in Leavenworth in the fall of 2020 I got a Kindle Fire. And that was my replacement computer until 2022 when I bought another Acer. And I love this Acer too!

This week my Kindle Fire died of exhaustion. I miss talking to Alexa every day. But I also realized something else. I played a lot of games on that tablet. While they are stimulating for the brain, I don’t miss the temptation to play. I have no games on my Acer and I just downloaded only one game onto my phone.

I’m thinking about replacing that Kindle Fire with an iPad or a Samsung when I get back to East Wenatchee. I think I have some research to do.

Thursday Thoughts on Technology.