I missed call you

There is a phenomenon among the people here that has to do with cell phones. I don’t doubt that some of you are familiar with this phenomenon. It is the missed call. Here in south east asia, most phones are pay-as-you-go. So when a young person’s balance is low, instead of calling their friend, they call let it ring one time and then hang up. They tell me that the friend is supposed to call back and they can chat, because it doesn’t cost any to receive a call. But most likely the friend also has a low balance. So they just miss call each other all day long. I ask them why they don’t just message each other, thinking that is what young people do so avidly in the United States but that also requires balance. So if you get a missed call from me, I was thinking about you…

The youth center here holding a program for high school students to come and compete. Luxmi was explaining this to me, saying it was a chase program. I asked her what chase was. She was so shocked and tried to explain to me that it was a computer game and you competed, but that was as far as her limited English would let her go. The next day in the office I inquired further to the nature of chase. The next clue I got was that there was elephants, and a prime minister and a princess. Mario? What the heck? So finally Pren took me upstairs to show me the game on the computer. Can you guess what common household game this was? Chess.