I FELT like a dinosaur after walking into a downtown handphone shop the other day. It's not because the pretty girl behind the counter called me "uncle", although I'm well past the spring of youth and approaching the autumn of middle age.

The sweet young thing (SYT) was offering me handphones that didn't interest me even though they were some of the latest range of models.

I told her I was a simple man and I just wanted a simple phone.

"Uncle, you should catch up with the times and buy a smart phone," she said.

As I'm not even smart enough to differentiate between "Blackberry" and "blueberry", I told her all I wanted was just a basic phone... a phone biasa.

I had gone to the shop after my unfashionable, but reliable, old phone of many years had finally refused to respond to all my thumbing and thumping after it got soaked for the third time.

"Uncle, you mean you want an auntie phone?" asked the SYT.

"What do you mean an auntie phone?" I asked, feeling antiquated.

"The most basic model-lah, can only call and answer and SMS. Yeah, that's my kind of phone."

The girl giggled and said: "Well, that type of phone is usually bought by bosses for their Bangla workers."

Looking determined, I said: "It doesn't matter. All I want is a simple phone. How much for an auntie phone?"

"A hundred ringgit, that's the cheapest, uncle."

"Okay, cheap and simple. Get me one," I said.

"Sorry, uncle. We don't have them now. Such phones are probably extinct. They don't make them anymore."

That sounded phony to me. By then, I was looking dismayed, lost and stranded in the superhighway of technology.

"Uncle, may I offer you the new basic phone?" asked the SYT.

But after being told it came with Internet, Bluetooth, camera and radio at RM500, I protested and said: "I don't need Bluetooth, Internet and radio."

"But you still have to pay for them since they come inbuilt with the phone," said the SYT.

I had no choice and later walked out of the shop with the new basic phone after paying the price of progress.