Ma Chungwa on the Line

Since arriving in Taiwan two weeks ago, I have been forced into a social experiment of sorts--or, I should say, an unsocial experiment of sorts, since it involved having little contact. I did something no self-respecting modern Taiwanese person would do:

I went two weeks without what locals call a shou ji--a cell phone.

Those two weeks officially ended today, and I have a phone that will allow me to call both domestically and internationally. Beware my wrath, ye who live in America; you may yet get a call at 3:00 in the moning your time.

I was forced to go so long without a phone partly due to my precarious visa situation (see my last post), and partly due to the strangeness of Taiwan's mobile operators, and partly due to my lack of a usable phone. Apparently, in Taiwan, you have to have citizenship or a residency visa to get a phone. I'm sure there must be services that rent phones for travelling business executives, similar to what I encountered on my trip to Israel, but I haven't seen them anywhere. So I was unable to rent a phone until I could get one properly.

Before my trip to Taipei, Eve (see last post) got me a SIM card for my existing phone, which would have been a fine solution except that I had misplaced my charger in transit, and so it was dead. I had to buy a new phone, which I did in Taipei--and promptly learned I couldn't activate the phone myself, as described above.

Today, finally, I got Eve to call up and activate the phone for me. From now on, I can recharge it at any local 7-Eleven, which means I am officially back in communication with the outside world.

This break from telephony has given me pause to consider what kind of communication age we live in. Thirty years ago, I think two weeks without access to a telephone would have been much more devastating. But as I still know hardly anyone in Taiwan apart from my employers, most of my communication was with the other side of the planet, I was able to conduct it entirely from the local internet cafe.

Strange, isn't it, that this should be the case--that it should be cheaper and easier to contact the other side of the globe than it is to contact next door? I suppose it hasn't helped my integration into Taiwan. Maybe without the internet at my disposal, I would have gone exploring around Taoyuan a little sooner.