To text or not to text? That is the question.

A few questions for you....

1. Do you think women better at sending text messages than men?
2. Do women send more text messages than men?
3. Is sending text messages cool?
4. Do young people prefer sending a text to sending an email?
(Is it only old farts like me who prefer sending an email?)
5. Why not use an ordinary phone to phone family & friends on
their landlines, instead of sending text messages to their mobile
phones?

Well thinking about my own family, my answers are:

1. Yes … the women are much better ... I’m crap at sending text
messages

2. Definitely yes … I’m outnumbered by women (and no, I don’t run
a harem), and all the women are constantly sending each other text
messages. The womenfolk are: Mrs C, our four daughters and two of
our nieces.

3. I don't think much of what I do is cool, apart from blogging of
course.

4. I get the impression that texting is the height of coolness …
and that it’s a young person’s essential daily activity … as
essential as eating food and having sex.

5. We’re on a phone tariff with Virgin Media, whereby we pay a
fixed monthly amount for any number of phone calls made day or
night to the cheaper landline numbers … which encourages me to
use our landline phone more. I’ve got little incentive to send
text messages at 10p a text, and so my mobile phone stays
switched off most of the time.

About a month ago, I bought a fairly new Nokia mobile phone
to replace one that was nicked. I asked the shop assistant to
show me how to work it … he showed me a fairly complicated way
of turning on & off the predictive text.

A couple of days ago, one of my daughters failed to turn us at
Nottingham Bus Station, as I’d pre-arranged with her … she’d
given me the wrong date (she came to stay with us yesterday,
in fact).

I wasted over an hour at lunchtime doing 10 laps around the
BroadMarsh Bus Station and then parking my car in a side street
(so I could nip into the Centre for a pee, and then hang around
the Bus Station for her).

So rather than hang around any longer, I sent Mrs C a text ... ...
well, this took me a lot longer than I’d anticipated … could I
work out how to turn off the predictive text? Nope. As a result,
I couldn’t spell certain words & names, and ended up sending
Mrs C a rather unfriendly text message: “ No sign so coming back”.

Mrs C’s quick reply: “Have you phoned Bubs?”.

“No.” (I didn’t have much money on the phone, and I wasn’t sure
how to phone out on it).

Well, Mrs C is a world expert on sending text messages on a Nokia
phone, and she gave me a quick demo of how to use it when I got
back (the shop assistant’s lesson was rubbish in comparison).
We ate up the fresh pizza we’d made for lunch, without Bubs that
day. Bubs was very apologetic for getting her dates mixed up.

Now, how do you switch the predictive text on & off? .... Er..hmm. :)