Sometimes I hate my Blackberry so much that I just cannot stand the face of that machine. Who am I? I am your everyday, commonplace 9 to 5 working employee in the office. The person who is very conveniently found slinking to the coffee machine almost every one hour, the person who has recently started smoking because it is the only way you can get into the pantry every hour ? no questions asked. That is right; I am the legendary, common and perfect work-shirker.

Life was going on fine until the regular cell phone came into the picture. With the advent of the cell phone, I could no longer tell the wife to take the call from the office and tell them that I was out of the house. All of a sudden, like the Big Brother's eye, people who wanted to contact me, and people whom I had no intention or inclination to contact, could contact me simply by pressing ten digits on a device that had come straight out of hell ? if you ask the procrastinator at least.

But life was still cool enough to live with the cell phone. I could say that my cell phone did not have the network, or that I find it difficult to text with the mobile keyboard and of course ? what email?

I am sure; it must be someone like that geeky colleague I had in my first office, who used to spend after work hours playing Counter Strike on LAN that must be responsible for this simply inane piece of communication ? the Blackberry. And it must be my wife that gave him company to actually buy this dumb piece of luck to rein me in. From a free bird to a shackled beast ? I had this transformation within minutes of receiving the Blackberry as my office communication device.

Okay, at first it was a love affair. Who doesn't love a gizmo? At times I even thought the wife would be getting envious of my new "girlfriend", but she kept on her mystic smiles. I should have known then what I was putting myself into. I was putting myself into an unpardonable Blackberry black hole!

Imagine my utter frustration when I found that I could actually type with as much ease as a keyboard with the QWERTY keyboard on the Blackberry ? surely the devil had come back to take his due back from the time when I was a project manager. And oh, did I tell you about the suicidal movement when I found out about the one touch email? There went the 'Oh, my Internet wasn't working at home and I couldn't access the email!' excuse, and of course I forgot to tell you about the one touch attachment opening with the blackberry ? that moment really made me feel useless and gave me nightmares about having to actually work.

It is a strange conundrum I am in. I cannot throw away my Blackberry which I feel like doing very often (It has made me a slave! I am a slave of the machine!) but I cannot keep it either. Are all Blackberry owners like that? I would really wish to know.