En réponse à Eamon Graham <robertg@...>:
>
> I think there's a similar phenomenon here in France. What makes me
> laugh are the people who purposely whip out the cell phone in public
> to look "cool" - how is it cool when I'm probably the only person in
> France who doesn't have one?
>
Don' ask me. I've seen children of 8 with a mobile phone (or a "portable" as we
say in French). This is pure nonsense...
My friend and I resist as much as possible the mobile phone invasion. We don't
have a mobile (what for? It would be always off with me anyway :)) . I don't
like to be reachable at any moment), and we call mobiles as little as possible
(it's too expensive. We don't use a phone company that charges 3 Eurocents a
minute for calls in France to have to pay more than a Euro per minute just
before somebody doesn't have the decency of having a fixed phone). Until
calling from or to a mobile gets as cheap as calling to and from a fixed phone,
I won't get one.
> But the funniest incident was when I was in a restaurant once in the
> Latin Quarter, and a young man answers the ring of his cell phone
> and starts a conversation - however he must have set the alarm to go
> off as if he had a phone call because during his "conversation" the
> phone rang and he had a real phone call... from his mother. :)
>
I love when that happens!! :)))
Christophe.
http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr
Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.