Before leaving America, I passed on my cell phone to John. It would be pretty useless in Russia, and I was interested to see what life without a cell phone would be like. Since it had been five or six years since I had been without the ability to communicate constantly with other, I wanted to see if I had grown dependent, if I would experience withdrawal.
I consider the experiment a mixed success. While I failed to notice any symptoms of cell phone withdrawal, there were confounding variables that I didn't take into account. For one, my feelings at the loss of family, friends, and all things American could have effectively masked those of separation from a phone. Also, I really didn't have much of anyone to call.
Yesterday, however, I gave in and bought a phone. I realized that what was a very minor inconvenience to me was much more of an inconvenience to other people. Besides, I could get a phone for about 40 dollars, and the minutes are very cheap. Rather than signing a contract and having a plan, here in Russia they just have little SIM cards in the phones and do a pay-as-you-go deal. If something happens to my phone, I can just take the SIM card out (it is smaller than the memory card for a digital camera) and put it in a different phone, and my phone number will work. I can even save my phone book to the card so that it will transfer easily too. America could learn something from this system, I think, but the phone companies would probably prefer we didn't. Another cool thing about the SIM card is that it is effectively free. It cost 50 rubles (2 dollars), and came with 50 rubles worth of minutes on it. The only difficulty is that the shops have to do some paperwork when you buy one, and a lot of paperwork if your passport isn't Russian. So, they just tell you you need a Russian passport. Thankfully, one of my friends was willing to make the purchase for me.
Well, that's my technological adventure for the week. I hope you all have a great Thanksgiving. I have to work all day on Thanksgiving, but Friday I will have dinner with some church friends and Saturday with my work friends. I'll write up how those go. Hopefully we can get a hold of a turkey. There is a frozen goose at the grocery store, but I don't think it would be quite the same.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
2 comments:
Hey Katherine,
Cell phones definitely do come in-handy but it is hard to just leave it off after you start carrying it around. We are celebrating Thanksgiving today (Saturday). I think we were able to get a turkey from the Army base but we would have been stuck with chicken if not. I hope you have a wonderful weekend.
-Lee
Well, you did better than me. I bought my cell phone the second week I was in Prague. But, to be fair, we have to use it for work. I rarely call anyone though b/c SMS is so cheap. We had T-giving on Sat., and we did manage to find a turkey, but it took 8 hours to cook in our toaster oven. It was a huge bird though, it fed abt. 18 people. Hope it came together for you.
Oh, and I do like the pay-as-you-go thing, but it can be annoying if you get cut off in the middle of a conversation. It was difficult to communicate w/ the guy at the store when I bought it though. Not that I needed a passport but because of the communication barrier. How's your Russian coming?
Post a Comment