telephonic joy and sadness in rice

Last week I returned a phone that I had found on the ground to its grateful owner. She is from Taiwan and she gave me these gorgeous little biscuits with my name in Kanji on them. She told me I was a wonderful person. I always think that any person would try to return a 'phone that they found, but obviously the real world doesn't work like that. It was a charming little ivory and gold Sony Ericsson phone and I searched her texts to find numbers of friends who may know her, tracked down her lecturer and found out her email address. I felt very nosey! Yesterday I put my (purple) mobile through the washing machine by mistake. Its sad little wet oblong face is blank and black. Placing it in a bowl of raw rice (thanks Google) for 12 hours at first appeared to partially revive it but it is now once more defunct. I'm lucky to have isync and a memory card so I've lost no data but it feels, in a small way, as if I've lost a friend, and found one. To have been able to give the gift of someone's phone back with all its precious pictures, numbers and messages from family is of far more value than losing my own phone which is just a lump of purple plastic/metal without its data. The biscuits are probably made of rice, too. Isn't it strange how the funniest things are linked. As luck would have it I'm due an upgrade so It'll be hello HTC Hero. I wonder if I can write applications for it in Python? hmmmmm