The Resurrection of the Phone

My phone died a nasty little death a few days ago. At first, it just started dropping calls. Then it started turning itself off at random times. Finally, it wouldn’t turn on at all. This was a little distressing. Suddenly I was out of touch with Lime, who works on the other side of town. I was out of touch with the office, which is bad because there’s a tendency for news to reach me at the last minute. I was out of touch with anyone who didn’t send me an email.

And, then again, in some ways, distressing wasn’t the right word, either. It was so quiet. It was peaceful, and I could sit an relax knowing that nobody would intrude on what I was doing. There never could be a call that I absolutely had to take. Even better, this was, considering that one of the student reporters I’m working with didn’t plan ahead sufficiently and was trying to call me at 11:00pm one night to arrange a meeting when I’d already told her what time to come to my office.

Well, after a little calling around, Lime helped me get the address for the closest service center, which was only about 15 minutes from my place by subway. I hopped over there yesterday afternoon, and the guy fixed it in fifteen more minutes. What’s more, he did it free of charge. So now I am back to the interconnected telecom world.

For whatever frustrations I do run into living in Korea, frustrations I have posted more than usual lately, I find that there are also good things. I’ve gotten so much free repair done in this country, on things the warranty for which has long expired, that I am really happy and glad about how “service centers” run. None of this, “Where’s your receipt?”, it’s all, “Oh, it’ll take me 15 minutes to repair this, please have a seat.” It takes less time to argue someone into accepting you won’t fix something for free, than to just fix it, and the loss you take will probably be made up in repeat purchases. So it makes sense, really.

Anyway, my phone is back up and running. Hmmm. And I was starting to like the disconnectedness, sort of, a little, except the part about being unable to talk to Lime.

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