I’ve been a laggard in my adoption of cellular telephone technology. My first complaint against cell phones is that they ring at inappropriate times, but I think I can avoid causing any disturbance. My second complaint is the cost. A cell phone just hasn’t made economic sense for me yet.

In the Netherlands though, I had to give in. My apartment here doesn’t even have a land line, so my only method of non-internet communication is to use a cell phone. It doesn’t cost me anything to receive calls here, so it’s actually a pretty good deal. (It’s certainly not a good deal to make calls, which cost about $0.30 per minute within the Netherlands.)

My cell phone supplier was nice enough to switch my phone into English mode upon purchase. Some things apparently couldn’t be translated though. "Vmail direkt" was easy enough to figure out, and someone finally told me that "Beltegoed" is the number to call for service. When you call that number though, a nice English voice give you a list of options. One of these is circularly translated: "For the service known as 'mobiel opwaarderen' press 2." That makes me laugh every time.