The gathering reminded me a lot of Plurk, there were people from different parts of the world, and different walks of life all in one place.

The venue is part of my family history, as my Dad used to come hunting with my uncle here over sixty years ago.

Looking over the hills and valleys, there is a a sense of timelessness.

Apart from some new buildings, nothing much has changed over the years.

We’re here to celebrate with family and friends, dining on a mix of Lebanese, Italian and Australian food.

It’s all washed down (as responsibly as we could make it) with liberal amounts of beer, wine, and then Lebanese coffee.

During the course of the afternoon, I met people involved in construction, real estate and investing.

I came out with a couple of introductions for business, and a rush job for a website for somebody.

There was no hard sell, just a lot of people enjoying themselves, having all the same debates about iPhones, the Nokia N95 and so on.

But isn’t that the way social networking is supposed to work?

Whether it’s a small gathering on a farm 20 minutes out of my home town, or on a website catering to hundreds of thousands, it’s all about relationships!

With all the hype over the iPhone in the past few weeks, it was hard not to get caught up in it.

With the time approaching to upgrade my own handset, I was very tempted to jump in to the pool and ttry Apple’s iPhone myself, but resisted the urge.

Last week though, I went looking, and it came down to a choice between the Apple product, and Nokia’s N95.

Working my way around different shops I got to play with both. I found the iPhone very intuitive, but price was always going to be a major factor in my decision.

I have been using a Nokia 6288 for the past couple of years, and didn’t expect the N95 to be that much different, though I did find it less intuitive than the earlier phone.

I did end up settling on the Nokia product though, as in most areas, for me at least, it appears to match, if not better the iPhone, and is of course much cheaper to purchase.

Okay, Where Do I get It?

Right The Nokia N95!

I made my decision, but of course, there has been a big push on the Nokia offering too, so it seemed to be sold out every where I checked.

The local store was expecting new stock ’some time’ over the next week or so.

The two stores that I checked at Sydney airport were both out of them, so I called into Westfield at Parramatta on the way home.

There must be one here I thought, with such an abundance of phone stores!

But I appeared to be out of luck! Having made arrangements to meet my wife at Kmart, I gave up my search and went to see what sort of a hit our budget had taken.

As I neared the bottom of the escalator near Kmart, I glanced over and saw another phone store, maybe…

The Vodafone store, part of the Star Communications chain, was flat out!

Here I met Dennis, Fung and my new phone!

I’m mentioning these guys because of the excellent service that I received when I walked into the store.

Once Fung had checked and saw that I wouldn’t be happy with something else, he got on the phone, turned to me and said “We have one at another store, and it will be here within an hour or so”.

Great! We fixed up the details so that I could be under way as soon as I returned, and I went in search of my wife.

After coffee, I returned to the store and was on my way, phone in hand within minutes.

Why do I mention this part of the purchase?

Left the Apple iPhone!

Simply because of the attitude of the guys in the store. You see, being involved in marketing, and dealing with the public, I like to see how different businesses operate.

To me, there is no sense in spending a fortune on advertising to draw people in to your store if they are going to leave disappointed.

Word of mouth is a powerfull marketing tool, both in the positive and negative sense.

I’m sure that Apple has sold a lot more of their phones due to the buzz on social networking platforms than they otherwise might have.

Most of the stores that I had tried earlier in the day simply said no, or handed me a card with instructions to call in “next week sometime.”

The fact that I lived almost three hours away was lost on them.

The Vodafone Select store operated by Star Communications can be found at Shop 3044A, Westfield Shopping Center, Parramatta.

You can contact them on 02 9687 0700. (International +61 2 9687 0700)

Please Note:

I have no affiliation with Star Communications, Vodafone, Nokia or Apple.

Opinions expressed in this post are based on my research, and the conclusions that I’ve reached are based on my personal needs.

Right The phone that my N95 replaced, the Nokia 6288!