In Continuum.

I used to leave my phone turned on all through the night though, I felt that it was something I had to do as a member of a relationship back in those days. I wanted to be there when I was needed, which was why the screen never went dark very often back then. But these days, with little to no obligations on my back, I really cannot care less about that little black piece of metal and plastic that sits on the edge of my desk. It's the holidays, it's not like there is a need to remain in contact with everybody, right? We've seen enough of each other throughout the semester, let's give each other a break before the next semester comes along. No matter how much a couple are in love, they can still get really sick and tired of seeing each other on a daily basis. Anyway, I don't need my cellphone all that often, but most people do. They live with it, they eat with it, they drink with it, and a lot of them sleep with it too. The problem isn't so much about their involvements with this little piece of technological genius, but the fact that a lot of these people cannot be bothered with simple basic cellphone etiquette. There isn't a manual or guide for these things, but there isn't a manual or guide for you to follow when you are in a high class restaurant either. Some things are just so obvious that they don't have to be said, it's the same thing. And these ignorance of cellphone etiquette, honestly, doesn't sit very well with me. 

My dad is a loud talker, he practically screams into his cellphone when he talks. Other than having little to none etiquette at the dinner table (he burps, he farts, and he cannot care less if his hiccups sound like a skunk stuck in a bear trap), his etiquette on the cellphone is non-existent either. I sometimes pity whoever that is on the other side of the phone, he is going to suffer some permanent ear damage if he talks to my father for too long. I would suggest earplugs while talking to my father, or just holding the phone five to seven centimeters away from your ear. Believe me, you won't miss a single word, because I don't miss a word myself if I am in my bedroom and he is in the living room talking to one of his clients. People who don't know my father would think that he's pissed off and frustrated about something on the phone - he really isn't. He's just loud, and he's naturally loud. He doesn't even realize that he is loud, much like how the person who farts never actually knows how bad his fart smells. It can be quite a nuisance sometimes, especially when he is doing some important business transactions over the phone at eight in the morning. He wakes me up whenever that happens, and it does that some effort to fall back to sleep especially when the call lasts for a little while longer than it should. 

But my dad's family, so I let a lot of things slide at times. I figured that if my mother's marriage to him for twenty-five years has changed nothing so far, no one else is going to change anything about him anyway. However, people on buses and trains don't seem to know the basic decency of keeping your volumes down, even when half the passengers are staring at them in the face. I was on my way to school the other day when this middle aged man came onto the bus. You know, the kind who likes to wear a white singlet under a checkered shirt, complete with a gold watch and a gold chain around his neck? Not to mention the obscenely long fingernail on his right pinky that stuck out like a thorn while he held his cellphone to his ear. It wasn't a pretty sight, but the volume at which he was talking at wasn't a pretty sound either. He was speaking in Hokkien at that time, and I was trying desperately to focus on the music in my ears. His voice intruded my earphones however, a deep and roughened out voice that sounded like nails over a chalkboard. I took off my earphones and listened to what he was talking about, and apparently it really wasn't some kind of emergency that couldn't have waited until the bus journey was over. It wasn't like his daughter was kidnapped or his dog tripped and got stuck in the toilet bowl or something. It was just him telling somebody about where he was and where he was going - great! Inconsiderate people should have their own buses and trains, so that they can annoy each other and rid us of their stupidity. 

Speaking of public transports, I do dislike insensitive people who cannot be bothered with earphones plugged into their cellphones when they want to listen to their awful music. You see these people all the time, the type that blasts their music playlist through the speakers of their cellphone in public areas for no apparent reasons at all. First of all, cellphone speakers suck, and any kind of music that comes out from those speakers, by default, suck. Now, when you are in an enclosed space such as, say, a bus, playing music through your speakers at that kind of volume is not only inconsiderate, it is downright idiotic. If you want your brain to be polluted by horrendous sounding music in bad quality, you can go ahead and use a earphone. Let me tell you a little secret: in truth, we really don't like what you are hearing. You noticed how the people who commits this inconsiderate crime are also the type who loves hip-hop and techno music? You don't hear someone who loves classical music blasting it in a public place, or someone who likes, I don't know, The Who for example. At least it'd make more sense, at least you'll receive more approvals. Not when most of your songs are made up of headache inducing bass and whistles. 

More on public transports, but this time a different species of idiots. Have you ever met those people talking on the phone with their boyfriends or girlfriends, and they cannot seem to hang up despite having said the word "goodbye" about ten minutes ago? The conversation usually happens like that: okay honey, I'm going to hang up now, I'll see you later. No, you hang up first. No, you hang up first! I'm not going to hang up first, you hang up first. Okay, we'll countdown and we will hang up together, okay? Okay, one, two, three. You are still here! You hang up first. No, you hang up first. The above conversation, multiply that by about fifty, and you pretty much get the kind of BS that goes on every now and then on a bus or train. These irritating dolts can't seem to keep their childish little arguments in the bedroom, they want to take it out into the public for some reason. I always feel like taking their phones and then smashing them into pieces on the ground and go "There, you hung up first". I'm not sure what makes things so difficult for these lovey-dovey dimwits to understand that terminating a call doesn't mean terminating that person in life. He or she is still going to be there, you don't have some magical powers that'd cause a bolt of lighting to strike her head once you hang up. So please, just hang the damn phone up. It's the red button on your cellphone, it's not that difficult. I'd like to do it for you, or the driver could do it for you. But you wouldn't like that, no, you wouldn't. 

I was out for dinner with a friend this one time, a high school friend I haven't met in eons. It was a nice little dinner, just the two of us, catching up and having a good time. Then, his girlfriend called him on his cellphone, and that began the forty minute phone conversation with his food slowly growing cold by the minute. His girlfriend called to ask about how to recharge the battery of her camera, and she was having some kind of panic-attack when she didn't know how. Apparently, taking the battery out from the camera and slotting it into the housing on the charger was too complicated for her, and my friend spent the better half of the conversation just telling her how to do so. The second half of the conversation involved her questioning my friend about who he was with, where he was, how many people were there, what he was eating, what he was wearing, what he was drinking, and what I was doing. I started taking pictures of my food at first, but that got a little repetitive after some time. So I started mixing the chilly and the ketchup on my plate, but even that grew a little old. The conversation didn't seem like it was going to end anytime soon, and she repeated the questions all over again. 

So, if you know that your boyfriend is having a dinner with his friend, be considerate and call back later. No, not knowing how to charge the battery of your cellphone isn't an emergency, and knowing where he was eating can wait. It was just rude to continue talking on the phone despite knowing that he was with someone, and my friend certainly didn't have the balls to tell her that it was rude either. I didn't mind then, of course, since I know how my friend is like. Still, I'm sure such a thing has happened to a lot of people, when a phone call becomes more important than the person at hand and your empty stomach. There is a reason why shop attendants are told to attend to customers at the counter first rather than the ones on the phone. They are physically there, and they are supposed to be priority. Unless you fell off your chair and broke your neck, call back later. 

Lastly, we have those obnoxious idiots who talks on their cellphones during a movie, a play, or simply in the wrong place and time. So you are watching a movie and you receive a phone call, the sensible thing to do would be to get out of your seat and pick up the call outside the theater. Or, if you really must, whisper to the caller and ask him or her to text you instead. Personally, I can tolerate that during a movie, no problem. I have, however, experienced people actually telling the caller what is happening in the movie, and then narrating it over the phone to that other person. What is the point of hearing a movie when you can pay to watch it yourself, do you derive more satisfaction that way? It's like phone sex, it's really very stupid. Rid of the visuals, all you get is the sound of someone moaning over the telephone when it really could have been pre-recorded. It's stupid, and it is pointless. But people do it anyway, in movies and in plays, what for? They also talk on the phone in libraries, and I almost always feel like throwing an encyclopedia at his head. Pick a good time to talk, or talk later. I don't mind the glare of the cellphone screen when you text, at least you bother to be mildly considerate there. 

So there you have it, cellphone habits that piss me off to no end. Someone should really think about having public transports exclusively for these people. Or, like what a Subway joint has done in the States, they kindly ask their customers to stay off their cellphones while ordering, or they'd be asked to leave the queue. The truth is, if you are going to behave like a child, you shouldn't be expected to be treated as an adult. If you are going to abuse the speakers on your cellphone by playing bad music over it, you shouldn't be allowed to have a cellphone either. That's why, I feel, we should have every right to toss cellphones out of bus windows or under the wheels of oncoming trains. In that way, these people no longer have the ability to annoy us, and we get a peaceful trip to wherever we are going.