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| Inside the Entrance Plaza, Sahl Hasheesh |
Well, I’ve been here almost five months now, which means that I have had five months to get used to my mobile phone. I’m sure most people would have adapted by now, well, most people would know how their phone works within a couple of hours at most, but that’s just not me.
For those that missed it, my first rant took place pretty much as soon as I got it (see blog from 22 Oct, 2013). I suppose I have progressed a bit, but I haven’t grown attached to it at all. In fact, I still hate it.
I did think that I might have warmed to it since I get the internet on it. However, in actuality, it’s just confused me. I should have gone for a simple phone and not a smart phone. Smart phones must be for smart people. I cannot understand why everyone insists that smart phones are so great.
One thing I don’t like about it is that I never know how much credit I have left. Therefore, if it isn’t working properly, I’m never sure if it’s because of something I’ve done or whether it’s just that I don’t have any money left on it. I had got to the stage where I realised I should assume I was out of credit, but then sometimes it doesn’t work one day (by “doesn’t work” I mean it won’t let me send text messages, for example) but then does work the following day. I still haven’t fathomed that out.
It’s annoying, because if it plays up one day and then works the next day, if I’m out and about in town and want to call Esmat to take me home, I’m always worried that I won’t actually be able to call and will find myself stranded. Not knowing whether my phone will work adds significantly to my stress levels.
One time, I went to get a top up card from the local shop; to my surprise, they seemed as befuddled as I am about how to do this, but eventually they did something and charged me the 25 LE (plus service charge). However, the next day, it still didn’t work, so that was a wasted effort. However, it also proves that it’s not just me that finds these phones impossible. I should add that it’s not so unusual to have a smart phone in Egypt.
Anyway, when the phone wasn’t working, I managed to get it to connect to my wifi. I fiddled about a bit and found something in settings about connecting calls via the internet. I thought this might get my phone to function. However, I don’t think anything changed other than to cause me another headache. Namely, when I wanted to go out, and no longer had my wifi, I was now no longer sure whether my current phone setting would allow normal (ie, non-internet) calls even if it did magically start working again. This was on top of the fact that I didn’t even know if this internet call thingy worked in the first place. And by this time, I’d completely forgotten how I’d found that setting on the phone to toggle it to internet calls. This phone is a nightmare.
My phone also has a Time Out facility and nowhere in the instruction booklet did it explain what this was. I kept on pressing it, wondering if this was what made my phone not work (I thought it could be a facility whereby you disable the phone function because you want time out from having to deal with any calls but wouldn’t mind using the internet or camera – this made perfect sense to me!). Perhaps I’d accidentally pressed that button and had disabled the mobile? Of course, once I’d pressed this option a few times, I subsequently became confused as to whether I was just making things worse and I had no idea if it was switched on or off. As it turned out, it was a fancy name for your phone to go to sleep when you’re not using it, so I needn’t have worried.
Despite having asked for the phone messages from Vodafone to be in English, I still get all the texts in Arabic. They have random numbers on them and I’ve no idea what they are on about. I find getting all these texts annoying in itself, I get hundreds of them, but what’s worse is that sometimes it gives me a beep. This makes me feel it’s a proper text message, but when I look it’s just a pop up message in Arabic. It looks as if it’s telling me I’ve just been charged, but I have no idea what it is, why I’m being charged (if indeed I am) or why it comes up as a pop up message rather than as a text like all the other ones. It’s all a complete mystery.
It also suddenly dawned on me that my package may be monthly and that was why I was spending so much money so quickly. I couldn’t work out how I could get through my credit so quickly when I barely use the thing. Surely the whole package should be more transparent than this? Whatever happened to the old landlines where you got a bill and you could see how much you were charged for each call and how this added up over a month? That was much easier. How did life get so complex and how do people cope?!
Completely frustrated, I did finally go to the shop where I bought it to ask these questions. It was made a bit more difficult by a power cut happening right in the middle of the conversation (I am doomed!), so I had to return later.
On the plus side, they were able to tell me that I was on a pay-as-you-go package and that I had 56 LE credit; they were also able to give me a phone number to dial to get a message back letting me know how much credit I had left. I asked if this could be sent to me in English rather than Arabic, but it was evidently not possible (she just pointed out that the numbers were not in the Arabic script and so I just needed to look at that).
I requested that the texts all be in English. She took my passport and photocopied it, but the end result was that the texts still arrive in Arabic. So much for that! I guess it's just not possible as that's twice I've gone in there now to ask for this. I also requested that she look at my settings to make sure that I hadn’t set it for calls to be sent out via the internet (I’ve since heard that this can be what eats up your credit). She fiddled around but I have no idea whether she achieved this or not. Consequently, I'm still rather confused.
I’ve bought two scratch cards for emergency credit. I just need to figure out how to use them, but at least the next time that I panic, I will have a solution (I just need to work out how to implement it!).
Even the camera facility on the phone irritates me a bit. I find it hard to adjust the zoom, the button is very sensitive so I always end up taking four or five photographs at one time (although I am getting the hang of this now), and sometimes it takes photos of its own accord.
I don’t like the way the phone always wants me to sign onto google (I’ve forgotten my password) and I can’t get it to download Whats App.
I fail to understand why people like these phones. But for now I have to live with it since I seem to be in a minority of one.
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