Let's do lunch ...

SMSes are cheap and convenient, but nothing beats getting personal

Friday • January 5, 2007

I SWITCH off my handphone before bedtime and usually, when I turn it on again in the morning, there are at most two SMSes waiting for me. But on New Year's Day, it didn't stop beeping until my inbox was full.

More than 30 Happy New Year greetings had come in overnight, most from numbers I didn't recognise. It looked like the senders had lazily chosen the Send To All option so everyone on their contact lists — even acquaintances they had spoken to just once before and possibly would never speak to again — got an SMS.

I have nothing against season greetings but that just struck me as being impersonal. Were the senders really sincere in their wishes or were they just being kiasu, not wanting to be left out in marking 2007 with everyone they knew?

Worse, they clogged up the system. Think about it — an Infocomm Development Authority study showed that eight in 10 Singaporeans are SMS users.

There are about 4.5 million subscribers here, so if those 80 per cent had each sent out greetings to 20 contacts on New Year's Day, there would have been 72 million SMSes floating about in just one day.

No wonder a message I sent to my friend to ask her for the location of her year-end party reached her only four hours later. By which time, I had found the address the old-fashioned way — by calling her — and was already tucking in to the spread.

The system was so overloaded that on the first day of this year, I had to resort to calling friends rather than SMSing them if I wanted to communicate. It felt really alien to make contact without using my thumbs.

The reaction I got from my friends showed how strange it was for them, too, to hear a voice at the end of the line instead of a mechanical beep.

"What are you doing calling when you can SMS?" one startled friend asked.

Singaporeans love SMSes. And why not? They're cheap, fast and easily avoidable (unlike phonecalls, you can pretend the message went astray and not respond).

When SingTel's first SMS Shootout produced a world-record breaker, its director Ivan Tan was not surprised, noting instead: "Singaporeans are among the heaviest SMS users in the world and we were confident there existed a world record breaker among us."

I love the system especially because it's discreet. You can SMS instead of passing notes to a colleague during a boring meeting. When I was dating, I'd message a friend to bail me out if the guy was turning out to be a nightmare. She'd call back so that I could pretend it was the office and escape.

But the recent New Year experience made me wonder if, by relying so much on SMSes, I'm missing out on the personal touch. If it takes four hours for an SMS to get to the other side of the island while I can be there in 40 minutes, then visiting people in person might be the way to go.

A former boss used to complain that, when he asked us to contact our clients, we'd immediately get on the phone.

"You're not telephonists," he'd roar. "Go and meet them face to face. Take them out to lunch."

I wonder what he'd make of the younger workers these days. When I was working, I had an entertainment budget, which the team could use when taking important clients out. None of my teammates did.

Of course, that saves the company money but doesn't make for good customer relations.

Even phone calls are old-fashioned now. Once, I asked an intern to check a fact and, instead of calling, she started SMSing.

"It's more convenient because no one picks up his phone any more," she explained.

"Besides, I can store the reply so I have a record later."

Fair enough, but I think my old boss was right. Psychologists say more than 90 per cent of our communication is non-verbal, so how do you tell if the "yeah, right" SMS your friend sent means he's agreeing with you or being sarcastic?

Yes, we can use smileys and such but emoticons only go so far.

I know of two friends who quarrelled because one of them, rushing for time, sent a short SMS that the other misinterpreted as rude and abrupt.

Once, a client took offence at the phrasing of an ex-colleague's message and she had to take him out for two lunches before the miscommunication was resolved.

So, my New Year resolution is to go out and meet my friends — the low-tech way.

Besides, my thumbs need a rest.

It's more convenient because no one picks up his phone any more

I had found the address the old-fashioned way — by calling her — and was already tucking in to the spread.

It felt really alien to make contact without using my thumbs.