Buying a SIM card: the shortest straw has been pulled for you

A big help with adjusting to life in Taiwan is getting a mobile phone. It's one of the first steps to feeling a sense of belonging, a new phone # that starts with the #9 as do all Taiwanese cell #'s (as far as I can tell). Number nine...number nine...

I was able to get a loaner for myself through my company but it was a pain in the neck and I was hoping for a more independent solution for Shirley. Upon the suggestion of a Taiwanese colleague, Shirley found an old GSM phone from several years ago and brought it with her. GSM phones use what is called a SIM card to establish the network on which they communicate and the actual # that people will dial to call you. In many foreign countries you can buy prepaid SIM cards at the rail stations and airports and that ends up being the most cost effective way to use mobile service when travelling.

So we set out for the local 7-11 to buy a SIM card to get Shirley up and running. I went to the counter and asked if they had SIM cards. The first guy kinda laughed, which is more of a nervous reaction for Chinese than anything involving humor. He looked at the second guy and said something in Chinese. They asked if I spoke Chinese and when I simply said "No", guy #2 ran into the back to put guy #3 on the hook for handling the SIM card transaction. Reminds me of last week when I missed a meeting with my leadership team and they voted for me to be the main presenter to get ripped apart by the sector management team.

#3 grabs some paperwork and heads over to the i-bon machine which is like an ATM for various types of networked transaction such as, buying concert tickets. I knew I would need 2 forms of I.D. to buy a SIM card but I had no idea exactly how complicated the entore process would be. He photocopied my passport and ARC and then cut out the photocopies and pasted them on another form like paper dolls. I had to sign some forms and it as very critical what name I used regarding middle/first and sequence. The idea of nicknames seems to be misunderstood here, which is surprising since most use some phony Anglo name. So I often have confusion over Mike/Michael and whether or not I use my middle name.

After we got beyone the signature, he had to put in a local phone # into the machine, and while I have my own cell phone, we don't use a landline. He had a heck of a time figuring out how to get the phone # to be accepted in the i-bon. I hate phone #'s. Who screwed this system up a long time ago such that you can just have a # that you dial the same way no matter where you are? In Taiwan, the cell phone prefx is 9 if you are calling from a landline, or 09 if you are calling from a cell phone. I haven't even figured out how to dial internationall yet. I'm glad that Fring doesn't create such a hassle.

Eventually we got passed that screen and there was another signature and he had to fax something in to the SIM card security checker people or something, to ensure that I was not using the SIM card for....I don't know what. You'd think the U.S. would be like this but you can just walk into a Target and walk out with n activated Tracfone. We paid 10 bucks for the SIM card which included about an hour of airtime but most importantly, assigns you a # so you can have other people call you. Incoming voice and text in Taiwan is always free so it's a good value if you just want people to be able to get a hold of you.

We left with the SIM card and installed it into the phone and read the instructions which said that it would take up to 24 hours to be activated, assumedly for a security check period. The next questions was, "So what's the phone #?" We looked all over the packaging and there were several #'s that had enough digits to possibly be the phone #. That's another thing I hate, there isn't even a world standard for how many digits are in a phone #. I tried dialing a bunch of #'s and couldn't get the phone to ring but I suspect "within 24 hours" is pretty close to 23.99 hours. So next day we tried again, no ring. Then dialed out from the SIM card phone and were able to just use caller ID to find out the #. Now that I know the #, it's staring me right in the face on the front of the package. At least I passed the security check.