Mobile Phone Etiquettes and Yelping Terriers

Mobile phones are now part and parcel of our lives. In Malaysia, about 95% of the population have at least one device.

But having a phone so personal in your live also means that there must be some kind of social impact as well. It’s like bringing your dog out everywhere. You love your dog, but you don’t want it barking, biting and peeing on everyone you see. Well, unknowingly, we can be as irritating as these people who thinks they are doing the world good by lugging their yelping terriers around.

I learnt most of these the hard way, so here are my suggestions on what we can do to irritate our neighbours a little less:

1. When you are talking to someone face-to-face or having family time and you absolutely must check your phone, just tell them that you will need a minute to check your message or pick up the call. If it is not urgent, wait till the discussion is over before you start tapping on the phone. Facebook and Foursquare is not considered urgent.

2. In the cinema, brightly lit LCDs are really annoying. If you need to check your phone, place your hands around the screen to minimize the effect. You don’t need the world to know you are replying to your wife whom you had a fight and you ran off to the cinema to watch Avatar to release steam… (not that I have done that before… *whistle*)

3. When you are in a meeting, try putting your phone on vibrate and in your pocket. It can be quite annoying to hear phones vibrating on tables. There is an application on Android called BuzzOff which enables you to set how long you want your phone to be turned to silent/vibrate. If your meeting or movie is two hours long, then set it to two hours and after that it will revert back to normal profile. Pretty useful!

Well, these are three main scenarios I can think off so far. If you have any suggestions, feel free to let me know!