Buying Symbian

On the night they had just started school, the campus was packed with people, all enjoying the novelty of their new environment to their heart's content.

Jiang Qin returned to the boys' dormitory by the same route, pondering one question the entire way: If he wanted to get started on campus, what would make the most money?

Internet cafés, supermarkets, milk tea shops.

These should be the first choices for all student entrepreneurs, because they required little initial investment, offered stable and considerable profits, and were relatively hassle-free.

But their drawbacks were obvious too: they had no prospects for growth, and their upper limits were very low.

Jiang Qin strolled along, then stopped in front of the School Supermarket. His gaze was irresistibly drawn to the poster pasted by the entrance.

"University Student Forum, the professional forum used by all university students."

Jiang Qin walked over, peeled the entire poster off the wall, and held it in his hands for a long while, his expression thoughtful.

Beep beep beep—

At that moment, a notification tone sounded. Jiang Qin pulled out his phone and saw a bouncing pixel penguin in the signal bar.

"Godfather, I have a question. How can I get someone else's contact information?"

"You've already found a target right after entering school? Not bad. Just ask boldly. Getting rejected won't cost you any money."

"Yeah, but is there any way to get someone's contact information without having to ask?"

Looking at Guo Zihang's question, the corner of Jiang Qin's mouth twitched repeatedly. This guy is definitely hopeless. Did he buy that mouth on credit? Is he too reluctant to use it?

Still, for the sake of being called godfather, Jiang Qin suppressed his impatience and decided to clarify the situation first.

"An upperclassman or an underclassman? If it's an upperclassman, you can forget about it for now. She's seen everything, and she'll see through your little tricks at a glance. If it's an underclassman, you can pretend to borrow her phone and then secretly call yourself."

"Then... what if it's a young auntie selling fruit by the school gate?"

"??????"

"She has a baby voice. My heart started racing the moment I heard her speak."

Jiang Qin's mind went blank for a moment, and then he suddenly felt as if a mystery had been solved.

Guo Zihang seemed never to have experienced the stirrings of love. When he was in high school, he had never shown enough interest in any girl—not even Chu Siqi could make him spare her a second glance. Jiang Qin had assumed his adolescence had simply arrived late. Who would have thought this bastard liked women who were fully ripe? He had been watched too closely in high school and hadn't dared make a sound, but now that he was in college, this bastard had started partying without restraint, hadn't he? Still, an auntie with a baby voice really was incredibly alluring.

Jiang Qin casually sent him a "get lost" sticker and walked back to the dormitory.

As soon as he entered the dormitory building, a series of heavy thuds came from upstairs. Six or seven university students rushed down from the second floor, and the scene was chaotic for a while.

Jiang Qin watched as he walked upstairs. When he reached the doorway, he found Cao Guangyu, Zhou Chao, and Ren Ziqiang also standing there, joining in the excitement.

"What's going on?"

Zhou Chao lowered his voice. "Freshmen from the Foreign Trade College got into a fight with the older students. I heard it was because someone named Li Dazhuang insulted and provoked the upperclassmen, calling them ugly."

Jiang Qin's eyebrows shot up when he heard that. "The Foreign Trade College actually has someone named Li Dazhuang?"

"What's wrong? Is he your friend?"

"Uh, it's not important. How's the battle going?"

Ren Ziqiang instantly became animated, his eyebrows dancing with excitement. "Do you know why this guy is called Dazhuang? His name really matches him. His arms are thicker than my thighs. Those older students really got the worst of it. They strutted in arrogantly, but when they rolled out, they looked absolutely miserable."

"We're university students now, yet they're still fighting. How childish. They have no class at all." Cao Guangyu wore a disdainful expression as he pulled a full-screen phone from his pocket and tapped it twice.

Zhou Chao and Ren Ziqiang were immediately drawn to it. "Damn, Lao Cao, what kind of phone is that? Why is the screen so big?"

"A Nokia 5230, the latest model. It hasn't even been released domestically yet. My dad got it through an inside channel. It cost a little over three thousand yuan. It works fine, but the feel isn't as good as my BlackBerry, and the response is a little slow. It's decent as a backup phone." Cao Guangyu spoke at length, as if he had tried every major phone brand.

"More than three thousand yuan? That's almost as much as tuition! Damn, can we take a look?"

Cao Guangyu handed the phone to Ren Ziqiang with great flair, as if he didn't care at all. In the end, though, he couldn't keep up the act and whispered, "Careful. Don't drop it."

Ren Ziqiang and Zhou Chao treated it like a treasure, turning it over and over in their hands. They nearly broke the stylus off the back cover, making Cao Guangyu grit his teeth in anguish. But he was too embarrassed to say anything, so he quickly shifted his gaze toward Jiang Qin.

Jiang Qin showed no reaction whatsoever to Cao Guangyu's new phone. He remained focused on the battle involving the Foreign Trade College.

Cao Guangyu felt rather uncomfortable, as if he hadn't managed to show off properly.

"Lao Jiang, aren't you going to take a look? My phone only has eight physical buttons in total. Have you heard of the Symbian system? It's a smartphone. I remember you use a Nokia too, right? A 2005 7610? That old machine is a little brother compared with the 5230."

Jiang Qin glanced back at him. It's already 2008, and anyone buying a Symbian phone is just asking to be fleeced. "Not interested. I've used one with only three physical buttons. That's what you call a smartphone."

"Only three physical buttons? Quit bragging!"

Jiang Qin ignored him, pushed open the door, and entered the dormitory. He took the poster he had just torn down from his pocket, flattened it, and spread it across the table. Then he dragged his suitcase out from beneath the desk and took out a Lenovo Workstation—ThinkPad W500.

It was a work-oriented laptop released in 2008, with a dual-core CPU, 4 GB of memory, and a price tag of 12,600 yuan.

Jiang Qin had bought it after receiving the demolition compensation. After all, once he started his business, he would inevitably need to use the internet. He couldn't keep running to an internet café forever.

At the sight of this, Ren Ziqiang and Zhou Chao immediately returned the phone to Cao Guangyu and swarmed around Jiang Qin.

What eight physical buttons? What Symbian smartphone? None of that was appealing anymore.

"Damn, a laptop?"

"Lao Jiang, can this run CrossFire?"

Jiang Qin plugged in a mouse and pressed the power button. "You mean CrossFire? I don't know. I haven't tried it."

Zhou Chao rubbed his hands enviously. "Buying a laptop and not using it to play games? That's a waste of a perfectly good machine."

"This is a workstation, not a gaming laptop. It probably can't run games."

Ren Ziqiang couldn't help leaning closer. "Then you can at least watch movies on it. Have you seen Chinese Paladin? The one starring Hu Ge? I missed the ending!"

Jiang Qin took out a network card adapter and inserted a SIM card. "You know about China Mobile data packages, right? Five yuan for thirty megabytes. Guess how much data it takes to watch one episode of a TV series?"

"Uh, I really haven't looked into that."

"At least 500 megabytes. Calculated that way, watching one episode would cost more than 100 yuan in data."

Speaking of this, Jiang Qin also found the situation rather ridiculous.

Although laptops weren't very common in 2008, every dormitory would have at least one or two.

But Lin University happened to have a ridiculous rule: to prevent freshmen from neglecting their studies over entertainment, every first-year student except those in the Computer Science Department was forbidden from running a network cable to their dormitory.

For now, Jiang Qin could only access the internet through his SIM card. He even had to install a data-monitoring application. The retro feeling hit him all at once.

"If it can't play games or watch movies, then what's the point of getting it?"

Cao Guangyu was a little sour. He planned to call his father and have him send over a computer too—one with high-end specifications, and definitely a desktop. He absolutely couldn't let Jiang Qin get the upper hand! Please follow for more, please follow for more, please follow for more.