You gotta read it. Can this be true?

NEW YORK – Students are using a new ring tone to receive messages in class,
and many teachers can’t even hear the ring. Some students are downloading a ring tone off the Internet that is too
high-pitched to be heard by most adults. With it, high schoolers can receive
text message alerts on their cell phones without the teacher knowing.

As people age, many develop what’s known as aging ear, a loss of the ability
to hear higher-frequency sounds.

The ring tone is a spin-off of technology that was originally meant to repel
teenagers, not help them. A Welsh security company developed the tone to help
shopkeepers disperse young people loitering in front of their stores while
leaving adults unaffected. The company called their product the “Mosquito.”

Donna Lewis, a teacher in Manhattan, says her colleague played the ring for a
classroom of first-graders, and all of them could hear it, while the adults
couldn’t hear anything.

I
just want to say that I am one of those guys who just can’t stand ring
tones. It irritates the heck out of me and more so when they go off during
a church or a business meeting. I understand the thrill of a
customised ring tone or maybe a few bars of a favourite song, but 
isn’t it getting out of hand?

I  attended a funeral for my aunt a few years ago and the pastor
who was presiding at the grave site didn’t switch his mobile off. It
went off once, he cooly fished it out of his pocket, switched it
off,  apologised and continued. A couple of minutes later, it rang
again, and without batting an eyelid switched it off and continued. Not
a word of apology. 5 minutes later it went off for the 3rd time! He
spoke into the phone while we all stood around the casket all agape,
than continued without a thought. Someone’s got to give the man a prize.

Then I had to come across this. This too, takes the cake – Nokia 8801
features an orchestral ringtone composed by Ryuichi Sakamoto!

The aural accompaniment of the Nokia 8801 is equally inspired. 
Award-winning composer and musician Ryuichi Sakamoto was commissioned
to compose the ringtones and alerts. Throughout his distinguished
career, Sakamoto has crossed musical and technological boundaries,
experimenting with different musical styles and making a name for
himself in popular, orchestral and film music.

What
can I say? As long as it doesn’t interrupt meetings, movie screenings,
church services, funerals, weddings, etc I’ll even call it art.

It was a letter to the editor that did it.

I had picked up this magazine headlined
GOING TO SCHOOL set below a sepia tinted photo of a Jinjang dump yard. Across
the top, its nameplate spelled out phases.
Its lower case type seemed a few sizes too small I thought, as if embarrassed
by its own appearance. I was intrigued.

Inside, an editorial by Biscuit-Eating Guy
proclaimed it was the “new,
transmogrified and completely refurbished issue of Phases magazine.” I did
not know much about its previous incarnation, but the new phases (vol.5 no.1) certainly looked cool. There were barely
disguised gripes against schools, compelling interviews, and rather angsty
scribbling (the kind that passes for creative writing) that invariably ended on
a positive note. Hmm. Besides, a lot of the writers were between 14 and 21.
Nice, a magazine for teens, written mainly by teens. I was sold.

A brief mention about homeschool caught my
eye; I wrote a letter to the editor (which led to my contributing an article on
entertainment a couple of issues later). Ends up, I’m making amends by hosting
a dinner for the conspirators Alvin, Huey Fern, and Pang. Six years later I’m
still paying.

You see, there’s nothing quite like phases
in Malaysia.  The magazine hoped to
encourage a passion for the written word, develop the ‘habit of art’ and a
facility to articulate stories and ideas that reflect the drama of our
God-haunted world. Its dream was to turn out thinking young writers who could
change words into salt and light. Yet like Flannery O’Connor, writing
competence was not all we were after. As she put it, competence alone is
deadly. “What is needed is the vision to go with it, and you do not get this
from a writing class,” she said. Which explains why from the beginning part
of the plan was to build a community of like-minded teens who would help one
another find his or her personal vision.

And for a while they came, teens caught in
an awkward limbo between idealism and cynicism, young writers in search of
light, who end up finding a voice of their own along the way. We had good fun,
great writing, and authentic community – online and off.

Several issues later phases had,
well, phased (again). Should that surprise when a magazine is named after
cycles of change and passages of time? 
But don’t write us off because we think there’s life in phases
yet. As the moon waxes and wanes, so dreams do emerge unscathed from the
shadows.

Enter PHASES ONLINE.

So here we are in the wild woolly web, and
bye-bye to phases the dead tree edition. We think being online is simply
another step forward in realising our vision. It’s as much a spiritual quest as
it’s a literary one, inspired by a God who was himself the Word made flesh.

Somewhere out there is a young person with
words blazing like fire in the bones, that he or she cannot hold in. Welcome to
phases online. You’re just the sort of person we’d love to hear from.