The Misscall
It took me a while to get used to this one. I was so naive that when the phone rang my reaction was to pick it up. Don't do that. Not in Lebanon, that is unless you enjoy screaming "Hello!" into a dead phone. I was baffled, why do people call if they don't want to talk. I was convinced that the sole purpose of the call was to make you look silly. Then I got my first cellphone bill.
Lebanese Cell phone minutes(NYSE) value is comparable to platinum. My cab driver today had 7 kids and only 5 minutes on his phone, you do the math. The invention of the Misscall was an essential survival mechanism for the Lebanese. Fire, the wheel, and the misscall. The Lebanese also mastered the use of these three discoveries simultaneously (see the daily police blotter for more info on that) .
But what good can a simple misscall do you? Full conversations if you learn your Morse Code. The most common one is the simple call me back misscall. You can always use consecutive misscalls or combinations of one and two ring misscalls or other variations to say whatever you want.
The misscall. Another clever creation from the ever so creative (or cheap) Lebanese.
Extra Credit: If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many misscalls is that?
1 comment:
I only bought a mobile phone when I started looking for a job... Quickly, my friends taught me the concept of the "missed call" and "2 missed calls"...
And till now, I still can't get it, how can "one missed call" means "hello"?!
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