I was asked to help collect an item from my company's customer this afternoon. I have never visited this person before, and my colleague had told me to "page" for him once I reached there. Originally I thought he had mistakenly asked me to "page" instead of "call", but I realised that this customer's number was actually a pager number! It has been a decade, or almost three-quarter to it, since I last dialled a pager number, and I have to try recall how to page. After some thoughts, I finally remembered the procedures and managed to get in contact with the customer.
With the handphone technology now in it's third generation already, I had never expected that there are still pagers out there in the market. I've not even seen any shops catering pagers these days! (Or maybe there is, just that I've overlooked them) I still remember a decade back, where mobile phones are still bulky and expensive, pagers were the "in" thing and every other teenager had got one. They were very small, about half the size of a regular mobile phone, and can be stowed away in the pockets comfortably. Comparing with a (modern) mobile phone, all that a pager can do was to display the number of the other party for you to call back. Nevertheless it was still fun, especially when it comes to trying to form words with numbers, like typing "01134" to represent "hEllo" (if you read it upside-down, that is). The newer models could display short text messages too, but one has to do it through voice via a telephone-operator, which meant no privacy at all. (Not that mobile phone SMSes are very private, just that we don't get to see whoever that's "spying" us!) And there were also cases whereby the telephone-operators misinterpreting the callers' words and hence causing confusions and frustrations
Looking back, it seemed amazing how technology had changed the way of life for us. If I were to go back in time, I don't know how am I going to survive without a handphone! The only thing "good" about pagers is that you can choose to not call back the other party on grounds that you couldn't get a public phone to call, thus being able to reject annoying calls without people accusing you of trying to avoid them!
With the handphone technology now in it's third generation already, I had never expected that there are still pagers out there in the market. I've not even seen any shops catering pagers these days! (Or maybe there is, just that I've overlooked them) I still remember a decade back, where mobile phones are still bulky and expensive, pagers were the "in" thing and every other teenager had got one. They were very small, about half the size of a regular mobile phone, and can be stowed away in the pockets comfortably. Comparing with a (modern) mobile phone, all that a pager can do was to display the number of the other party for you to call back. Nevertheless it was still fun, especially when it comes to trying to form words with numbers, like typing "01134" to represent "hEllo" (if you read it upside-down, that is). The newer models could display short text messages too, but one has to do it through voice via a telephone-operator, which meant no privacy at all. (Not that mobile phone SMSes are very private, just that we don't get to see whoever that's "spying" us!) And there were also cases whereby the telephone-operators misinterpreting the callers' words and hence causing confusions and frustrations
Looking back, it seemed amazing how technology had changed the way of life for us. If I were to go back in time, I don't know how am I going to survive without a handphone! The only thing "good" about pagers is that you can choose to not call back the other party on grounds that you couldn't get a public phone to call, thus being able to reject annoying calls without people accusing you of trying to avoid them!
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