Monday, January 3, 2011

Avalanche of Wishes for Datuk

I think the phone companies make much more money in the month of December every year because of what I reckon a substantial increase in the number of text messages sent over Christmas and New Year days.

Perhaps an average minimum of, say, 100 text messages per person over each of those 2 occasions isn't really an exaggerated estimate? In fact, I won't be surprised if some people are sending out and receiving many, many more greetings via text messages. Going through the contacts on my phonebook, and carefully selecting only the "most important names", I still ended up sending out over 100 text messages over Christmas and New Year!

The funny thing about sending holiday greetings via text messages is that it's almost impossible not to use a standard format, i.e. something that one could use over and over again for everyone. So perhaps one can set up, say two or three styles, and then just send off those few styles alternately to all the friends. I have seen quite a number of very long-winded greetings which I'd imagine must have taken ages to compose! And if one were in the mood to be a bit more hardworking, one might want to add the names of the recipients at the beginnings of that standard format messages. I suppose that could give an impression to those recipients that the messages were not in fact recycled materials—personalized messages if you like.

But, to repeat, there are just too many text messages to send out; and sometimes one is bound to blunder by forgetting to change some parts of the messages which were originally meant for someone else!

And so I was fairly amused when I received the following from a friend:

Hello Cornelius, before I start dancing, drop on the floor and lose my phone, I wish Datuk and family a great year ahead with abundance of good health and happiness.

I doubt that I will ever be bestowed with a Datukship in this lifetime; and I see no good reason to pursue it anyway. But I guess this is the closest I will ever get to be a Datuk—via a mistaken holiday greeting!


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