My attitude toward the cell phone

For those in my trade, pagers and cell phones are a must, and are issued by the work unit. The first cell phone issued to me seemed only capable of local calls. It was a heavy black thing that took up almost one third of the space of my handbag. At that time I would always feel a little embarrassed when using it because once I heard "a high-class person" say: "A woman fishing out a beeper or a cell phone gives you the feeling that she is a spy." I particularly hated the Chinese slang term for cell phone, dagedaig brother*. Fortunately, people later began to call it by its proper name, shouji and phone*.

Nowadays cell phones are getting smaller and smaller while the area they cover is getting larger and larger. Each time there is a big story, my boss at the TV station will issue the order: all reporters and presenters, make sure your cell phones and pagers are on all the time! Return immediately when called or paged! Beep! Beep! Beep! Ring! Ring! Ring! Can you imagine how we could possibly do our job without them?