A Pink phone, mysterious Antoine, and the Lust Project

I got a new phone last week. This is a Big Deal for moi, who has had the same phone number (and subscription) since 1998. I’ve also had a collection of the cheapest phones on earth (the last one had Arabic letters on the keypad) because I always seem to break or lose them. But it’s spring and, darnit, I’m sick of being too embarrassed to take out my phone in public.

So now I have a metallic pink one with a matching case (that looks like a little purse) and a Bluetooth ear piece in case I’m feeling in a Trekkie mood (actually quite handy when I’m chatting away and cooking). I’m almost too embarrassed to take it out because it’s so…pink. But really, what’s embarrassing is that I went into SFR with a list of what I needed in a new phone, and came out with….pink. Okay, it’s smaller, cuter, lets me listen to music and take (bad) photos, and has a color screen. As soon as I figure out what it does, I’m sure I’ll be more impressed.

What I’m not impressed with is a bizarre French law that allows you to keep your phone number if you change service providers. Yeah, sounds great, doesn’t it? Except that I had a particularly odd case, because my old phone was in my ex’s name, not mine, and I wanted to change the subscription to a professional account. So I needed the ex (who lives in Belgium) to write me one letter saying to cancel the old subscription (while keeping the right to use the number for a new one), and another letter saying that I could use this number. Easy, right? Nope. Not if I wanted to stay with SFR (they had a good promo going, so I did**).

Seems that if you want to cancel one SFR contract and open a new one with SFR, you can’t use the same number. The “portage“, as it’s called, is only applicable if you move to a new carrier. Silly, non? The whole point of the portage law was to give consumers the freedom to choose whichever company they wanted, without losing their old number. Whatever. I gave up and decided to get a new phone number.

Maybe that’s what happened to Antoine. Three times now I’ve had someone call me looking for Antoine. One cool byproduct of this was a texto I received asking me to check out a new website, www.Lust-Project.com. A very cool site, indeed: funny story, catchy tune, and cool t-shirts. I couldn’t figure out which friend had sent the texto, because although I do tend to get a lot of emails of this sort, only my friends had my new phone. So I replied and asked, and Anne-Margreet answers “I thought this was Antoine’s number”. I told her I liked the site, and we exchanged web links. Happy ending. Wonder who Antoine is?

** But if I was in the market for a new operator, Debitel looks very interesting. Anyone else using this one?