how to learn a language and link to Hubble

Today's little challenge for bored shop assistants:

* Find a mobile phone (one of the more advanced and complicated ones) that someone has left behind by mistake in the second-hand shop where you work (in the bargain bin).

* Draw on your compassion and human decency and decide that you want to try to return the phone to its owner.

* Realise that the phone's language setting, hence all the menus and functions, is Arabic.

* First of all, try to unlock the keypad.

* Mess around with all the buttons for a while.

* Press the cancel button to turn off the camera function that you involuntarily activated while doing the above.

* Admire the picture that you involuntarily took of your navel.

* Press the cancel button a few times to turn off all the other functions (web browser, MP3 player, picture gallery, Tetris, universal translator, intergalactic communicator, direct link to Hubble telescope) that you involuntarily activated while doing the above.

* Try to figure out what "Contacts/Phone Book" may look like in Arabic script.

* Try to decide which one of the little squiggles looks like it may be the phone number to next of kin (what is "Mum" in Arabic?).

* Press green to call a random number.

* Press red to end the call when someone says some very angry words in Arabic at the other end.

* Admire the live feed from the Hubble telescope for a while while you ponder what to do next (discover an unknown galaxy while you are at it).

* Press green to answer a call from a caller identified by more squiggles.

* Press red to hastily end the call after being informed by the unknown caller that you will not get away with this and that the CIA and Interpol and NASA are on the case and will be knocking down your door any minute now.

* Listen to some soothing Arabic music for a while on the phone's MP3 to calm your nerves.

* Activate the universal translator function (accidentally) and call the number marked "Mum".

* Return the phone to its owner after being promised all the Prophet's blessings and a lifetime's supply of halva cakes (or something to that effect, but you are not sure the universal translator actually works as well as it seems to do in Star Trek).

* Inform NASA that you want the galaxy you discovered named after you.

This almost happened to me today.