Yesterday, Jan 2, 2006, I left my mobile phone at home.
This morning, I was on the road. I brought out my Nokia 6670. I wanted to know how many phone call or SMS I missed in the second day of the holiday. I expect there must be many holiday greetings.
The text on the homepage (or should I call it desktop, depending on whether I am in Internet age or PC age?) was: 65 New SMS Messages.
What are the 65 Messages?
Most of them are new year greetings. The other two or three bank activity notification from my favorite bank – China Merchant Bank.
65 SMS – that is a lot. That is not the peak of the new year greeting. I think I got more on Dec 31 or Jan 1. There are even more on the Christmas Eve.
Thanks to Most Friends
Thanks for sending me the SMS. I appreciate every SMS I receive.
However, there are clearly some unique SMS that contained my name in it, or very short message (like Happy New Year), I know the user at least spent a small effort to type in something or bothered to send specific SMS to me.
The others were some common terms – very long – used all the 70 characters possible of SMS, and it was a routine. I received many exact same SMS from different friends. I am afraid I didn’t feel as much warmth as the really hand-inputed SMS. A little bit more than 1/3 of the SMS – more strangely, I totally have no idea about who they are. They either didn’t put a name and their mobile numbers were not in the address book of my mobile, or they put a name but I really had a hard time to figure out when we met.
Again, I appreciate every single SMS. I just feel I am more moved by some SMS – no matter how short it is. That is the spirit of holiday, isn’t it?
Hi Jian Shuo,
just came across your blog and wanted to offer a quick complement about its quality…It is indeed well done.
I work at Purdue University in the US (I’m an assistan professor of statistics), have a lot of chinese colleagues and interested in China (history, literature etc. )
I can understand why it isn’t nice to find so many empty congratulations…I agree that you want only those from the peopl you really care about. Even worse is to find some corporate messages trying to sell something to you under the guise of New Year messages…Happened to me, unfortunately:)
Michael
Hi Michael, Purdue is a goo duniversity, very famous in China as well. It is nice to hear from you. For the greetings, I am not frustrated to see the messages, just feel to have more personalized SMS is more meaningful to forward existing one…
— fully agree with you, Jian Shuo.
you can’t feel too much anymore if you have received from different people same standard long story many times on same day… and even some familiar story comes every year…
Hi Jian Shuo,
thanks for getting back to me. I’m wondering if you have any classmates that are currently working/studying in Purdue.
Which University in China did you go to? I know people here who graduated from almost every university in China:)
Michael
I am from Shanghai Jiaotong University – about 7 years ago.
65 greeting SMS, humm.. that’s a lot!
however, not sure how many did u replied? even if just a thanks notes & same greetings?
and if not, will u care that u might get less SMS next time?
haha, as for me, i’m not that lucky and popular as u to get even over 30… (expecting though…), but i do reply them ALL, just to show my appreciation and same greeting to no matter who he/she is, at least this ppl bother to send me something…