Thoughts on Texts & more importantly Emojis!

My favourites are all in the first row: the two with blushing cheeks, the winking one and the blowing a kiss

I've never been - and am still not - that big a fan of text messaging. I prefer sending emails to texts because I can type on a computer keyboard much faster than I can "type" on a phone. I have gotten used to them now and I understand their utility but I still don't love them. So many people I know love texting though and send texts all the time! Maybe one of the reasons I've never wholeheartedly embraced texts is that my phone plan didn't have a texting option when texts first caught on. I think the first text I ever received was from A. back when we were both at Berkeley and I was so confused to see a written message from him on my phone :) Wait, it just occurred to me that I would occasionally text in Santiago. So A.'s text wasn't the first I ever received. Texting was pretty popular in Chile. I remember L. remarking once that texting was way more popular in other parts of the world than in North America (that has changed I believe!). So correction: the first text I received in North America was from A. Regardless, as that last year at Berkeley continued on, more friends started to send me texts and it was frustrating to be unable to text them back!!

When I lived in Paris in 2007, my cell phone came with a text option (texting - called either "textos" or SMS -  was really popular in France) and I got more used to sending texts. My British friends C. and S. texted a lot and would always end their texts with an "x" which I really liked. When I came back to North America, and then ended up in Austin, I made sure to get a cell phone with a texting option. I didn't send a ton of texts but I definitely sent them fairly regularly as it caught on more and more. What was super frustrating about that plan though (my carrier was Verizon) was that for some reason whenever I went back to Toronto, my phone refused to send texts. E. had the same plan as me (she lived in NYC at the time) and when she came back to Toronto she could send texts. No fair :) I even called Verizon and they weren't particularly helpful just telling me that they weren't sure why some people could send texts when in Canada and others couldn't.

My pre-iphone phone looked like this. Texting is hard on one of these!

When I moved back to Toronto and got a cell phone with Koodo, I was happy to see that texting was included with all their plans. However, I soon learned, much to my annoyance, that I could not make smiley faces like this :) on my phone. So annoying! Those smiley faces are much more useful than I initially knew they would be. I feel like they could change the whole tone of a message (tone in general can be so difficult to convey over text) in an important way. I can think of countless times when I wanted to put in a smiley face but couldn't and was frustrated!

Finally, at the beginning of last November, so five months ago, I got an iphone. Besides it being great that I can now check my email from anywhere (I especially like checking from bed when my laptop is in the other room) and that I have cool apps like a flashlight app and UNO (which D. and I play a lot!), and that  texting is much easier now that I have a keypad vs. having to type everything with my thumbs on a regular number pad like on my old phone, the hands down main reason I love my iphone is because of the emojis. They are so much fun! Emojis are Japanese which is so unsurprising to me because the Japanese are just so great at things I like like stationery and stickers and clothes and cool kitchen supplies and loving French culture and so of course they'd be great at emojis. I now try to use emojis as much as possible. D. and my mom also love them and so I can use as many emojis as I want when sending them texts. Emojis just add so much to a text. They make them cuter and more fun and sweet. And easier! Why type "I feel like a glass of wine" when you could replace "glass of wine" with an emoji of a glass of wine? My very favourites (and most used) are the blushing ones, the one blowing a kiss, and the one with the sunglasses but I seriously love all the emojis. I love the hearts and the lips & all the random ones. I hope you can use emojis too, and if you can't just enjoy looking at all these pictures. And, be sure to click on this link which features drawings of all the emojis. Super cool!

Here is a screenshot from my very own phone! You can see all the emojis I recently used. You can also see that I asked D. if I could post this on my blog and he obligingly said "Of course"  :)

One of my most used

So this is another screenshot from my phone. See the bubble with the dots, it means D. is writing something and is about to send me a text! In my recently used, you can see more of my favourites like the bathtub, the pink heart with the bow (I think that's my mom's favourite one) and the sunglasses one! 

I included this one to show all the variety: there are animals, flowers, foods, fruits, etc. etc.