Received 2 SMS past midnight yesterday. Both were friends wishing me a happy and prosperous Lunar New Year. Nice little messages, but the timing could be better. Imagine being woken up from a deep slumber by the beeping of the phone to see a non-urgent message. During the Christmas seasons, I received some messages even at 4 or 5 am!
Some might say I can always switch off the phone if I don’t want to be disturbed, but nobody knows when an emergency occurs that might require friends/relatives to contact me via my mobile phone in the middle of the night.
Not really blaming my friends for the late night SMS, since they might not have control over the actual time I receive the messages. From what I know, SMS messages can get delivered hours after they are sent due to the high traffic over the festive seasons, especially one or two days before the actual ‘Big Days’ like Christmas, New Year and Lunar New Year.
However, some time ago I ticked off a friend who was sending me messages after midnight, during off-peak seasons. His reply to me was that in his circle of young people, sending SMS to people in the wee hours of the day is a common practice.
Maybe I am getting old, but I belong to the group of people that will think twice before calling/SMS people after 11pm, just in case I disturb their rest. Corresponding via email / facebook / twitter is another matter though, since all these communication channels do not usually cause an alert (unless one enables the alerts) upon receiving them.
So during this Lunar New Year season, I hope to receive less of the almost-heart-attack-inducing-midnight-SMS and more Wall Posts / Twitter talk / Email / Blog comments from my friends. 