6th March 2004

My Korean handuh-pohn*

I can travel all over Europe and much of the rest of the world with my old Nokia 3310 and send and receive both calls and messages to friends all over the world with similarly simple phones.

Satisfaction

Here in Korea, things are different.

Firstly, whether you like it or not, all phones come with internet and email so they're really expensive and have colour screens so large that every model has to be opened and closed each time you use it.

I've just recently bought a new phone, as basic as they get here, but still at quite some cost.

A pain in the a**

I cannot use it anywhere outside of Korea.

I cannot send messages to phones outside of Korea, and I cannot receive messages from outside of Korea.

Why on earth not?

I know Korea has this unique phone network and is more technologically advanced than most countries, but seriously, isn't the whole point that you can keep in touch with people?

Babies, farmyard animals and UFOs

In my pocket

Not a single one of them sounds anything like a telephone.

I can have a baby giggling to alert me of incoming calls, a goat, a horse, a rooster or even a cuckoo.

It has melodies that I've never heard and melodies that I'd never want to hear.

Under the sub-menu "Basic Bell", it has a selection of ten noises which I'd best describe as recordings of arcade games, R2D2, an electronic Not-So-Big Ben and strange intergalactic garbage.

I took it back to the store and asked them to change it so it would ring-ring, ring-ring and ring-ring like normal phones - impossible.

Bring in the clowns

And here's another thing...

I'm in the movie theater, at a wedding or teaching a class and I want to quietly switch off my phone.

Impossible.

Switching off the phone sounds like a circus coming to town.

*hand phone, mobile phone, cell phone, or whatever you call it where you're from.