R and J

This picture is about as irrelevant as the post that follows. That's a very nice Honda Civic, by the way.

For the longest time, Romeo Montague had been a Singtel user. His father was a Singtel user, so it was only natural for him to be one. It made the handling of bills by his father easy. His father didn't want to make the billing even easier by subscribing to the MIO plan, but that's another story.

Romeo never had a problem keeping to under 300 SMS each month. His old plan allowed for 360 sms, and he had to struggle just to hit half that number. Romeo never was popular. He often hung out with the same few people; they would communicate with very curt SMS messages like, "Same time, same place, doing the same thing". He never had that problem, of course, before he met her.

Juliet Capulet was an M1 user. Like most mobile plans go, it didn't make any difference who the provider was. They offered very similar plans, caused by this freak of nature called competition. She had always overshot the sms limit, but it didn't matter to her father, who paid for her bill.

Romeo and Juliet were the in the throes of SMS passion. He's send her an sms every morning to greet her and wish her a good day ahead. From there, they'd continue messaging till they slept at night. It was a good tool for communication and for staving off boredom.


"Romeo! What the h*** is this?" Mr Montague bellowed. Romeo glanced at the piece of paper in his father's hand and answered, "It's a phone bill."
"Not just any phone bill, young man, but YOUR handphone bill! You overshot your talktime by 7 minutes!"
"It's 7 minutes, dad. And it's the first time I've done so in my 4 years with this subscription plan."
"And what about this? Doesn't your plan provide 1000 free sms? Why are they charging us for the 45 messages over 500?" He stabbed an accusing finger at the figure on the bill.
"Oh, the plan's only allows 500 free sms to Singtel customers, on top of the 500 free. That adds up to 1000."
"So why the h*** did you send so many sms!"
"Dad, all this while I've only sent 200 sms TOPS. You complain that I'm not fully utilising my allocation, that we're not milking the most out of my plan. I overshoot by 45 messages this time, and you start yelling at me. So what is more important to you? Scrimping, or fully utilising my quota?"
"I want you to control yourself! Stop sending so many messages!"

Mr Montague was not making sense to Romeo. To stop sending "so many messages" was to not fully utilise his sms quota. But oh well. Romeo decided that his SMS relationship had to end. The only way out of this was for Juliet to move to Singtel.

"Why Romeo? Why can't you move to M1?"
"My dad's a Singtel shareholder." Romeo answered simply, as it that answered the question at all.
The couple sat quietly, watching each other fidget once in a while.
Romeo ventured unsurely, "So I guess this is it. Your dad won't switch to Singtel, and mine won't move from it. Our sms relationship is doomed."
Juliet stirred. She wanted to say, "Don't leave me, Romeo." But she could only have done it over sms. So she reached out and grabbed his hand.

For the first time, they touched. It was a different sensation as one they got from tapping plastic keys repeatedly. It felt... warm. They pulled each other close and shared a long kiss. "We'll have to meet up more if we stop our SMS relationship." Romeo whispered.
"I don't mind. I feel so much more complete this way." Juliet cooed in reply.
Romeo pursed his lips and said, "Good. My ez-link card doesn't have a quota." -Jimmy