further randomness

[waider]

Bar Staff: Jamie the Chinese guy and I establish that I could probably get around China by writing down what I want, since we played, "what's this Kanji?" while I was downing my after-hours pint.

Other: Holy Fuck. Aurora. Wow. I have never seen aurora in my life, and now I'm staring at the lines in the sky and being utterly amazed not just at seeing them, but at the fact I can see them even in the presence of a whole assload of light pollution. Woah.

Comments

[candice.livejournal.com]

Just so you don't call my cellphone drunk, from china, while i'm still asleep recovering from my own hangover at 1pm, using the assistance of two phone cards like sertrel did, get around china all you like. :)

[(Anonymous)]

Except that the Mainland uses a slightly different character set: simplified vs traditional.

The standard procedure on the mainland is to talk to you in their local language first (i.e. Cantonese if you're in Guangdong). When that doesn't work, they try Mandarin (because that's the common language of all of China). When that doesn't work, they start drawing characters on their hands with a finger, because even if you can't speak you must be able to read and write, yeah?

There's a definite subtext that foreigners must be slightly stupid if they can't even read and write.

dave

[waider.livejournal.com]

Ha. That would required that I knew your cellphone number, of course, and there are a good half-dozen people who would be equally or more likely to get a "HELLO! I'M IN CHINA! AND I'M DRUNK!" call, since they currently occasionally get "HELLO! I'M IN IRELAND! AND I'M DRUNK!" calls.

When I visited San Francisco a couple of years back, I took my phone's SIM card with me and popped it into a rented phone so I'd be contactable on my usual number. I got a call at 8am one morning from my brother, who hadn't realised I was in San Francisco and wanted to know what I was doing in bed at in the middle of the afternoon.

[waider.livejournal.com]

I'm just rereading this

I took my phone's SIM card with me and popped it into a rented phone

and thinking how amazingly SCI-FI it sounds.

[candice.livejournal.com]

The vaguely sci-fi'ish bit, I'm surprised that actually worked.

Knowing my cellphone number usually just requires a bit of stalking; right now you'd only find the old one I think, though.

The losers turned off finger on a system whose users have been using it for info for over 20 years, otherwise I'd point you there. :(

[waider.livejournal.com]

The vaguely sci-fi'ish bit, I'm surprised that actually worked.

Well, you know, I used work in the GSM cellphone industry. And every time some CDMA twonk tells me how their favourite system is so much better, I tell him sure, he can phone me up to tell me about it, regardless of whether I'm in Europe, Asia, Australia, or even parts of the US. Too bad if his own phone is out of coverage at the time. Technologically it's a crappier system, but in practical terms it's streets ahead.

The losers turned off finger on a system whose users have been using it for info for over 20 years, otherwise I'd point you there. :(

I last had a usefully fingerable account in college. And I had the little hack where the .project file contained "\rNo life.", and there was no .plan, so if you did finger waider@wherever you'd get

Login: waider Name: Ronan Waide
Directory: /home/waider Shell: /bin/bash
No mail.
No life.
No Plan.

Which I found amusing. Which I guess proves the "No life." bit.

sigh.

[candice.livejournal.com]

I would love to be able to afford a gsm phone. So would a lot of us, but the only cheap-phone option is cdma crap. I'm not even sure how good the coverage is around here either, considering I'm in Lesser Metropolitan Areas now.

(at the moment, i have a piece of crap with a dying 7 key (delete, for voicemail.))