"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results."
~ The rental insurance agent, when asked about replacing my stolen iphone ~
Friends of the blog may recall that earlier this year, my iphone was stolen. Well, stolen is such an ugly word - really it was more that a security guard in an upscale Malaysian hotel rifled through my bags while they were in "locked" storage, removing my laptop and iphone, then ultimately returned my laptop to me after he uploaded to it pictures of himself and a short pornographic film of him nailing his girlfriend.
Sadly, the iphone was never recovered.
Along with my good pal Shwa "Player Hater" Losben, I spent my last hours in Asia running around Kuala Lumpur filling out police reports and bitching to various hotel officials in the hopes that I would get some kind of reimbursement for the value of my glorious smart phone. The unrequested acquisition of a homemade sex tape on my desktop bothered me less than the sudden loss of all my Plants Versus Zombies accomplishments, but in either case I wanted justice. I wanted to be made whole for my troubles. And as of this past weekend, the wrong is righted.
A few months of cross-border negotiations led finally to the filing of an insurance claim by the hotel for their little ooops-my-bad, and they wired me the value of my stolen phone. All in all, they were actually pretty helpful throughout the process, even if it did take a few months of back and forth. This fortuitous cash infusion coincided with me FINALLY getting my old Samsung P.O.S. exchanged for a shiny iphone 4. I thought I could never love a piece of technology as much as I loved my old iphone, but I was wrong. New iphone is like getting a second puppy who can fetch the paper and bark the alphabet while the first puppy suffers from arthritic pains and needs to be held upright while defecating. Old phone, replaced and forgotten.
Needless to say, I rushed to get my phone set up right when I got it Sunday evening, so I plugged that bad boy in to my laptop (complete with the homemade Malaysian videos as evidence, should it ever be needed), and to my surprise it offered to restore my old phone settings for me. Could it be? With the press of a button, could all my settings be restored, pictures recovered, contacts replaced, Plants Versus Zombies cheats re-unlocked? It absolutely could have been... had not that damn security guard already updated my laptop with his stupid iphone settings.
My first clue that something was amiss came when iphoto popped up on my computer displaying 9 pictures of the thief himself, staring at the phone in an attempt to customize my gear. I knew I was really in trouble though when I saw the 10 hours of phone calls this guy made to any number of his 85 contacts that he added. Among the dozens of hotel employees and managers, some of whom helped me fix up this whole mess, one named popped off the page and caught my eye - "My Lover Sha". Finally! A name to the...well, I would say face but you never actually see her face in the video.
I had to chuckle as I plugged my phone back in and wiped it clean of the security guard's evidence-stockpile that he left behind. This whole ordeal was so ridiculous and drawn out that when it finally ended, I was just happy to bury it and move on...especially given my new "never-have-I-ever"trump card, "never have I ever seen a Malaysian homemade dirty movie".
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