I Link You

as my time in paris comes to an end...

It's interesting to see how people can change the way they communicate if put into a different setting and culture. It's also fascinating to see how I personally changed the way I communicate with my peers and environment.

For one thing, I was living here for less than 3 months. Like everyone who knows me, I really can't live without a mobile phone nowadays. It serves as my watch, my planner, my "rape whistle," and my contact to the outside world. Without my phone, I always felt like I was not in the group (and this was the case for many people in my program that decided to forego the mobile phone). I had to choose the prepaid option which was in retrospect incredibly expensive. Despite the fact I can receive calls and texts for free, it was pretty expensive to make calls (0.55 Euros/min). Since most Europeans choose to text anyway, I found myself sending more texts (0.10 Euros/text).

Here is the breakdown for my mobile expenses:

30 Euros for the sim card
50 Euros for calling credit
25 Euros for text credit

For a grand total of 100 Euros in 11 weeks, so around 40 Euros per month.

As 200 texts are a lot for 2.5 months, I would like to say that I used all of them and spend a significant amount of time texting people rather than calling them. Not because texting on a LCD phone is efficient (in which case.. not efficient at all), but for the fact it was much cheaper and effective (especially when you're trying to contact people in clubs).

Another thing, if I tried this entire prepaid plan again, I would've gone to a different provider rather than Orange. It was annoying to buy credit for SMS and talk time separately. Some providers just let you use your credit for both SMS, talk time, and internet access. This would've been a lot easier for me to keep track of as Orange's SMS account management is never up-to-date.

In terms of styling for mobile phone, I have to say that I have a taste for sliders now. It must be super-convenient to be able to receive calls and text with one hand. On the other hand, I am using my music player and camera on my phone a lot more for different reasons. Being on the metro for at least an hour every day required me to listen to music in order to keep myself from being bored. Everyone (Parisians and foreigners) listen to their IPODs or MP3 players in order to distract themselves from the loud trains.

As for social networking, it doesn't seem like French teens are as rabid as American teens on MySpace and Facebook. Then again, I just met a girl from the UK who is on Facebook and uses it extensively. The France network on Facebook is slowly growing, so maybe in another year, it will be a rage like it is in the United States right now.

posted by Koh @ 3:35 PM