weirdness

Sitting here surfing the net looking at pictures on flickr, when out the blue my skype phone rings. 

My skype phone hardly ever rings. 

I have an Austin area number, so family and friends can call a local number to talk to me even though I live in Taiwan.  But, my mom and I usually skype on the computer, and I'm usually the one who does the calling to my sister and others.

But, tonight, the skype phone rings.  I don't know the number, but I see that it is a 512 number, meaning someone in Austin.

I decide to answer.

For a brief moment, I am not sure what to say.  My gut tells me to say "wei" (how you say hello on the phone in Chinese).  My brain tells my gut that is wrong.  My mouth doesn't know what to do.

It was a very weird feeling.  Weird that I actually had to consciously think about something I've done unconsciously my whole life.

Finally, my brain reasoned that hello would be best, so mouth obeyed.

I then hear a voice I don't know say, "Linda?"

For a split second I wanted to tell this stranger that he had called Taiwan.  For a split second, I wanted to speak Chinese just to freak him out a little.  I wanted him to be able to share in the hilarity of it all, but again brain won because it reasoned that it would be too difficult to explain, and this poor guy wanted to talk to Linda, not me.

I did, however, laugh a little when I told him it was a wrong number . . . . think about it: this guy was trying to call an Austin number but got someone in Taiwan.  Pretty wild. 

Welcome to life in the digital age.