GET OFF THE PHONE!

Quite possibly I am defective; I cannot engage in long pointless telephone conversations, and the concept of spending over an hour talking or listening to someone on a phone gives me the heebie-jeebs. This in contrast to the woman at the laundromat the other day, who was deep in conversation for well over eighty minutes. No, I haven't a clue what it was about.
I wasn't listening, and I don't speak Spanish.

The Cantonese grannie two seats over had two content-rich exchanges in that time. One telling her daughter that it would take another fifty minutes, the other informing her it was almost done, she'd wait for the car.


My recent telephone conversations have mostly boiled down to "you are a scammer, please don't call this number again" and "we don't have airducts, kindly put me on your 'no-call' list". "No, the lady of the house isn't in."
Which is almost all the interaction I need from Alexander Graham Bell's fabulous invention. And it's a landline, not a cellular device.



Fun little Cantonese idiom: "boiling telephone congee".

煲電話粥
To talk on the phone a very long time; 'bou din waa juk'.


For most of my life I have considered the telephone a tool, rather than a social aide. Let us talk about this invoice, that order, whether you have the thing, and that horrible rash on your shiny bald head.
Okay, fine, and see you there.

Hey man, I can't come in today, I have a daemon erupting from my sternum.

Obviously I do not text either. No insta-message software.

As an alternative, I could throw something.

At someone's head.


Otherwise I can communicate via e-mail, face to face encounters, and either likes or random comments on Facebook. There may be delays on the e-mail, and my privacy settings on Facebook are rather strict.



My ring tone is indeed highly unusual. You will only hear it if you are inside this apartment. It's best in the teevee room, where most of the non-cuisinary electronic equipment is. It sounds like a phone.




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