Hi everybody. First off, my best wishes for a terrific 2010 to you and your loved ones! 
My thread's title question points to this situation: Yesterday, my double bass master (a Polish guy who is like my father to me - BTW, you can see/hear his band in action here) gave me a cell phone as a present. A Nokia 2630. Nice gesture from him. The thing is...
...I HATE CELL PHONES! I've never had one and owning one has never been in my plans. I suffer from some sort of "chronic annoyance feelings" toward phones and I only have my fixed-line one just for the sake of having some sort of real-time communication with others in case of necessity.
If any other person had given that present to me, I wouldn't mind to leave it buried in the most hidden corner of my house. But again, I appreciate this guy so much and I'd feel like offending him if I don't use the phone. Of course I don't want to give the number to anybody else, but I think it's inevitable that most people I commonly interact with will know of its existence. I've always thought that it's sort of rude to keep the cell phone off (and why someone would have a cell phone if he/she's going to keep it like that?) so I don't know what to do here.
Of course, I love gadgets and right now I'm very amused configurating and customizing it (well, I need a bluetooth adapter for my PC first), but anyway I don't want to think how I'm going to feel when it starts ringing. All of my life, the sound of a phone ringing has been an annoyance to me, not to mention that I don't like to be that readily reachable (unless it's an emergency, of course). E-mail and public cell phones have been more than enough to communicate with others for me.
So what would you do if you were in such situation? I'm a complete ignorant on "cell phone etiquette" aside from turning it off when inappropriate, so I really appreciate your input. Thank you in advance!
My thread's title question points to this situation: Yesterday, my double bass master (a Polish guy who is like my father to me - BTW, you can see/hear his band in action here) gave me a cell phone as a present. A Nokia 2630. Nice gesture from him. The thing is...
...I HATE CELL PHONES! I've never had one and owning one has never been in my plans. I suffer from some sort of "chronic annoyance feelings" toward phones and I only have my fixed-line one just for the sake of having some sort of real-time communication with others in case of necessity.
If any other person had given that present to me, I wouldn't mind to leave it buried in the most hidden corner of my house. But again, I appreciate this guy so much and I'd feel like offending him if I don't use the phone. Of course I don't want to give the number to anybody else, but I think it's inevitable that most people I commonly interact with will know of its existence. I've always thought that it's sort of rude to keep the cell phone off (and why someone would have a cell phone if he/she's going to keep it like that?) so I don't know what to do here.
Of course, I love gadgets and right now I'm very amused configurating and customizing it (well, I need a bluetooth adapter for my PC first), but anyway I don't want to think how I'm going to feel when it starts ringing. All of my life, the sound of a phone ringing has been an annoyance to me, not to mention that I don't like to be that readily reachable (unless it's an emergency, of course). E-mail and public cell phones have been more than enough to communicate with others for me.
So what would you do if you were in such situation? I'm a complete ignorant on "cell phone etiquette" aside from turning it off when inappropriate, so I really appreciate your input. Thank you in advance!
) and all someone has to do is text you info, you read it. Then you decide to reply or not, at your convenience. I don't see anything more relaxed than that.
