For some of you who don’t know, I’m a wannabe competitive scrabbler. My participation in the Malaysian Scrabble Association National Championships 2010 would mark my return to the world of competitive scrabble after a year-long hiatus. Naturally, I would do all the training I can beforehand and hope for the best.

Upon arrival, I was informed that the turnout of Intermediate players was too small to play amongst themselves; we would have to play with the Masters (and place among ourselves at the end of the tournament). That’s when the nightmare began.

Not only was I severely outmatched, I ran into an uncanny string of bad luck. It is bad enough to be the losing player to the highest-scoring game of the tournament, it happened twice: two players scored the high game of 619 against me.

Sure, I’m playing with Masters, what would I expect? Unfortunately, my spread (cumulative score) was pretty low, that it meant the difference between me in 5th place (out of 7 intermediate players) and 3rd place as we have the same number of wins.

Bingoes that I have placed:
SALIVATE, SPARRED, POPULAR, LICENSES, SHRIVEL, THREADS
I can’t remember the other half.

Well, my rating stands at 1534 as of date. In all likelihood, I will be MIA for a year and my rating will disappear again.

I have in my hand one of Nokia’s first attempts to break into the touchscreen smartphone market with the Symbian S60 operating system. They positioned it as a music companion, sporting a widescreen display, quality built-in speakers, and a standard sized 3.5mm headphone/video-out jack. Coupled with an included 8GB microSD memory card, I can safely say that the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic makes good consolidation of a phone and an iPod Nano in terms of capacity and function.

The sound quality of the speakers is rather remarkable for a phone; at maximum volume, it is loud enough for you to have to raise your voice to converse inside a car. The headphone jack is a welcome feature, as it breaks you free from proprietary Nokia earphones. Plus, the Music Player app functions well for the average music lover. Nokia has succeeded in delivering on its asserted strong points.The 5800 XpressMusic handles differently than an iPhone as its screen is pressure-sensitive and not touch-sensitive, which people can get used to with time. However, the interface is not as fluid and fast-loading as the iPhone, despite having sufficient processing power and RAM. The tiny vibration, emitted every time an on-screen button is pressed, does help to some extent. Nokia goes all out on making this phone as usable as possible; you can use your fingers, the stylus or the included plectrum to type on up to four different virtual keyboards.

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