I ran into the “flashing” behavior in Malawi this summer. People jokingly referred to the Flashers Association of Malawi (FAM)–sort of a double joke on flashing as well as the seeming propensity in the country to make an association for everything. “Flashers” tend to get a bad rap over time, since the idea is that they are insisting other people call them and use their minutes. It’s a bit like being a mooch.

Interestingly, Telkom introduced a feature in their service whereby you can tap in a certain code followed by a phone number, and it will send a polite text message to the recipient requesting that they call the sender back–a kind of more organized (and more socially acceptable) way of flashing. For all the faults of Telkom (and they are legion), this is a pretty cool example of incorporating mobile phone behavior on the ground into their offerings. Celtel (their local competitor) doesn’t have it yet, but I’d be surprised if they don’t soon.

(Seriously, thanks for the feedback. And if you want to respond to these questions/critiques, you’re welcome as well, Genevieve.)

* It’s “pinyin”, not “pinyan”.

* “In Chinese, a character is a word or a phrase, and can be abbreviated further.” A word or phrase consisting of multiple characters could be abbreviated, but I can’t think of any good examples of a single character that can be abbreviated (I don’t see how it’s possible, short of simplified vs. traditional characters).

* In some cases, Chinese SMS/IM uses the Latin alphabet for phonetic abbreviations because it’s faster to type and makes you look cool.

* the “novella on a phone” thing isn’t really any more practical in Chinese than in English, and it’s been done in English (Virgin Mobile had one).

* She’s totally right about the mobile phone effigies, though, and I’m digging her basic belief set.