Journal Entry #11

What do you think about the people who camp out for new technology (e.g. iPhone 5s)?

I personally think that it is pointless to camp out for new technology. We always learn about being happy with what we have, and hey, I used an old Nokia for many years before finally getting a old smartphone in Grade 9 (my brother’s old HTC Desire). Besides wanting to be an engineer, technology, and especially Apple technology, does not spark me to camp 15 days to be the first to sweep up tons of new phones to use them and raise their prices in the market (in Chinese we call it “frying prices” (straight translation)).

Driving away from the smartphones for a bit, I feel like trends are a destructive force. Trends seem like those generic “appealing traps created by Satan”. And it is true. Those who follow trends waste tons of money buying things that they won’t even use for more than a few months. I know of someone (no names) who always followed trends and at one time bought the iPhone 4, then the 4s, then the Samsung Galaxy SIII, then the iPhone 5, and now he wants to get the 5s. I don’t want to be offensive, but there are many like him that wasted lots of money on trends and still think they gained.

My second argument against smartphones is striking against the “frying prices”. I see it absolutely horrid that people buy 20 new iPhones and don’t use them, but sell them at a much greater price, hence the frying prices. One of the greatest problems in Hong Kong is the housing issue, which is intertwined with the gap between the rich and the poor. Because the rich people could afford to buy many houses (such as Li Ka Shing), they buy many apartments and raise its price high so they could profit much from just a few houses. When they get more money, they buy more and sell more, and fry more housing prices, and in the end they become very rich. However, these people are viewed as the evils of society. They pay the government so that the government will have more money for its purposes, which mean that the government can’t and won’t do anything about this issue.

The housing issue is much like the smartphone issue (trends and prices), where many people sit and wait for the new phones to come out either to brag about it (not a lot of people do this as a primary purpose) or fry its price to the extreme (many people do this). I think that it is not worth it to wait for new phones, because it only wastes our time, marks us as inconsiderate people, and wastes lots of our money if we fail to “fry” the price well.

If we don’t tackle this issue soon, the world will fall into a chaotic realm of trends and prices, which is just what Satan (the devil) wants for us: The devil wants us to indulge in these trends (fashion, technology, etc.) which makes us more distant from God our Father, and many of us are falling into Satan’s traps today.