Mobile

In this visit it is astonishing to see the jump in mobile usage this country took. I have not met anyone who doesn't have one, at least. Despite the expenses of the apparatus, and calling bills, everyone seems to be able to afford it. Whether it is the last Nokia model, or the neatest accessory, all is available in a way I haven't seen in USA. It wasn't like that when it started 5 years ago when the fee for a new number was 60,000 SP ($1,200).
Few of what I noticed is the following:
1. Use of cellphones while driving is prohibited, yet everyone does it. Barely any one uses a headset or a Bluetooth headphone. The one person who used a headset, and was wearing a seatbelt too, was a taxi driver I rode with, but he almost got us into an accident because he kept talking and looking at me at the same time ignoring all what is around him.
2. The 4-seconds rule: this is how some people afford to pay bills. Apparently the companies (the only two available) generously made the first 4 seconds free of charge. If you are a fast talker, 4 seconds can say a lot especially if you already know what you want to say. Some conduct full conversations using the 4 seconds. And in one instance witnessed by my aunt, a certain person kept calling and hanging every 4 sec all the way from Safita to Damascus on one of the buses. Figure something like 3 hours. This is ridiculous.
3. Bluetooth: I have to admit that I was naive. Before coming here the only use of Bluetooth I knew of in mobiles are to connect a laptop to the internet, and to use a wireless headset. I didn't know about video/audio/picture swapping. I didn't know about "blind dating" through Bluetooth (two people literally chatting, if they are in a close vicinity, without knowing each other), and so forth.
4. SMS: has become a very common method of saying all kind of nonsense messages. And let's not forget jokes. Every now and then, some one would look at his mobile, smile or laugh, then definitely forward this to others. This happens on all social and scientific levels without exception.
5. Billing: one has to understand that incoming calls or messages are free, but outgoing are not.
6. Voicemail: if you ask anyone here about it they will probably say, what is that? There is no one who activates such service. Why? Not exactly sure, but has to do probably with billing!!! Like anywhere else there is a billing for the time used to place the message, and the time to listen to it. So what happens is if you call someone and no one answers?? No one will answer, and you are probably expected to return the call, whether you wanted it or not, whether you knew who was calling or not.
7. Freedom: because you have a cellphone, you are expected to be available all the time, or most of it at least. And if you don't answer naughty thoughts start to cook. Where has adventuring and privacy of old disappeared. No one had a mobile, yet everyone lived, and did what he had to do. And what's more, no one had to be within reach, tell where s/he is and so forth.
8. Professionalism: it is expected that the use of cellphones is for urgent needs, and then anything else. But now that can't be done, because everyone is identified with a cellphone number (it like a social security number now) and thus if you meet someone you will get his cellphone number. If you want to call him you have to use your cellphone because it is cheaper. Anyway, about professionalism, people at work should not be using there mobiles, nor the police officer on the street who frequently ignores traffic and checks whether someone sent him a message or something.
9. I suggested instead of sending telegrams in the event of inability to attend a wedding, to send an SMS (LOL). So instead of برقياً – خوري/حنا  there would be SMS -093 555555
10. Contract: cellphone contract are eternal. They do not expire, they can be transferred with great difficulties (I heard), and you are stuck with it.

With all this, I have to tell this story, ask Wael Youseff about it, about the prices of cellphones. One day before he leave to USA, we stopped by a cellphone shop in Kassa' قصاع. He asked about some models that would work in USA and the price. The vendor said that it is cheaper than USA. We don't know exactly for sure, but we told him that we got our cellphones for free when we signed up, I will say it again FREE (mine is a Nokia 6610 and his a Sony Ericsson but the model escapes me). His argument was that you can't take a SIM card form one company and put it in a cellphone from another) so you would have to buy a cellphone. He is partially right because you can't do that. But we told him that what we can do is better: annul the contract, get a new phone (for free or a small sum of money) and keep the same number. He was still convinced it is cheaper here. And we were convinced he is a moron.