Phones with superpowers or lack of knowledge?

   Maybe people in US are use to pretending they are talking on a phone when they aren’t (and people actually believe this?), but Ukrainians aren’t that naïve. If you want to pick up a girl by talking on a phone expressing “superpower”, it probably won’t help unless the phone is very expensive. The main consequence is: you will catch a girl who is just obsessed with expensive devices, but not about boys with superpowers. So, here is the truth: nobody tries to show his phone superpower; just some mobile operators have it. As an example, the very first of them in UA – Kyivstar has the best network coverage and this enables you to make calls from inside the tunnel at almost every place in the subway. John might think now that it’s entirely my fault: if he had known about this earlier he would have bought a superpower SIM-card.

     Speaking of crowded events, I’m not sure whether that’s true. When the connection is overloaded you CAN’T always make a call, but if you are able to do this and somebody isn’t answering, “overloading” might just be an excuse for him not to talk to you. By the way, I was able to receive calls on the square at the same time (Victory day) as opposed to John.

    SMS service is not as inexpensive as phone calls are using Life. You don’t pay anything calling Life subscribers (but it’s also depends on your tariff plan, so now I’m talking about mine), but you have to pay like 5 cents (30 kopecks) for each SMS. If you’re sending a text to someone who is abroad or if you are abroad  yourself you are paying approximately 17 cents (1 hrn, 20 kopecks) for each message.

So my tips are:

·        before buying a SIM-card in UA, you had better find a Ukrainian who is able to explain in English which tariff plan will be better for you (after that you will have him to blame for every problem with your connection);

·        although mobile services aren’t so bad today in UA you still can use “I had problems with my connection” as an excuse if you don’t want to talk;

·        if you’re a bit pretentious or trying to seem like a serious businessman, you SHOULDN’T buy a Life card, because stereotypically it’s just a cheap operator for students. A few years ago it used to be a very weak connection and they gave free SIM-cards to a lot of people just to find subscribers, so their clients were mainly students who are always looking for freebies. Life is not as bad now, though, but the stereotype still exists;

·        you can set up voice mail on your phone, but it’s not popular for some reason.

·        phone calls usually do not do any harm (wherever you are) except in apocalyptic horror novels by Stephen King (for example, Cell, 2006) or if you are extremely “unlucky” (sorry for your phone, John);

·        but that’s true: you can run out of money quick as a wink receiving a call from UA when you are in Russia.

Posted by Helen