bury me with it
i remember it was around the year 2000 when handphone usage had its first explosion and most adults bought their first phones. within the next 5 years, this spread to almost the entire population.
the second explosion was the smartphone explosion, sometime during 2008-2010 when i was still in ns and thus completely missed the boat.
the speed and proliferation of handphone usage meant that kids born just a few years after me practically grew up with a phone in their hands and this leads to quite a huge difference in attitudes towards phone etiquette.
i first noticed this when i entered university, as this was when i first had more encounters with people who were of varying ages.
one of the worst things these phone-people would do was to use their phones openly during lectures, and by openly i mean elbows propped up on the table, phones right in front of their faces, happily tapping away while the lecture was going on.
i could not believe how incredibly rude this was, and yet it seemed to them like it was a perfectly normal thing to do.
and of course we have phones during meals, phones while talking to friends, phones at all the times when they shouldn't be around.
then when i started work, 2 girls came in on the same day as me, and oh my...
today one of the girls might have broken some sort of record. i noticed that she was using her phone to the point where her laptop screen had shut off due to inactivity, and she was still blissfully tapping away. it's really quite impressive because it takes 15 mins for the laptop to go into screensaver, and then shut off after another period.
there were only 4 of us in the beginning, and half the team had their faces perpetually buried in their phones. needless to say, my team has developed a terrible reputation within the office and even spread to other parts of the building.
i won't be there for long.
the second explosion was the smartphone explosion, sometime during 2008-2010 when i was still in ns and thus completely missed the boat.
the speed and proliferation of handphone usage meant that kids born just a few years after me practically grew up with a phone in their hands and this leads to quite a huge difference in attitudes towards phone etiquette.
i first noticed this when i entered university, as this was when i first had more encounters with people who were of varying ages.
one of the worst things these phone-people would do was to use their phones openly during lectures, and by openly i mean elbows propped up on the table, phones right in front of their faces, happily tapping away while the lecture was going on.
i could not believe how incredibly rude this was, and yet it seemed to them like it was a perfectly normal thing to do.
and of course we have phones during meals, phones while talking to friends, phones at all the times when they shouldn't be around.
then when i started work, 2 girls came in on the same day as me, and oh my...
today one of the girls might have broken some sort of record. i noticed that she was using her phone to the point where her laptop screen had shut off due to inactivity, and she was still blissfully tapping away. it's really quite impressive because it takes 15 mins for the laptop to go into screensaver, and then shut off after another period.
there were only 4 of us in the beginning, and half the team had their faces perpetually buried in their phones. needless to say, my team has developed a terrible reputation within the office and even spread to other parts of the building.
i won't be there for long.