Originally, I had planned to spend the last day before taking off to my four week stint in China working from home. Wrapping up projects, cleaning out my inbox, calming down my excitement and starting to pack.

Well, my three-year-old BlackBerry, for which I have received many pitiful looks and patronizing comments from enthused iPhone, Android, Samsung and whatever users, had a different intention on how I should spend my last day. If you can’t tell already, I am – was – fairly attached to this device! Somehow the BlackBerry decided that it did not want to join me on my trip to China – it just stopped working.

So, the next morning after a doctor’s appointment – not for the BlackBerry and not related to the BlackBerry incident – I get in the car and drive to the office. For those not familiar – it is a 1 hour commute (that I had not planned for that particular day). At the IT Help Desk/Mobile Shop in the office they offer me an old-school cell phone to replace my multi-functional smartphone…. Well, no, not really! We try that again! Almost two hours later I have a used but perfectly working smartphone (iPhone) what I appreciate very much.

The new phone works well, but I will miss my BlackBerry and its physical keyboard (in case you wonder why the BlackBerry obsession).

And, I don’t even want to think about how this day would have looked like without my smartphone issues.

Off to packing…