Coming soon to Canada - caller ID!

Until a couple of months ago, Canadians must have used smoke signals to communicate with each other. Or cans attached to strings. Or they taped messages onto hockey pucks and got the Canadian geese to deliver them.

Because getting a cell phone here is ridiculous.

First of all, instead of 1 or 2-year agreements, most companies have 3-year agreements. For a commitment-phobic like myself, this is as annoying as Avril Lavigne.

The number of minutes is also a joke. Most plans start at 200 minutes a month - I don't think this even exists in the United States or Europe. (To give them some credit, night-time minutes typically start at 7 as Canadians have lives outside of work, unlike Americans).

Most plans here don't include text messages so you have to pay extra for that. Want to call the United States? That will pretty much bring your monthly charge to a three-digit number. In fact, when I inquired about such a plan, the salesperson said: "Oh no, you'd want to use a phone card for that."

It gets worse. Unless you're willing to sign your life away for 3 years, most phones don't use SIM cards and can only be used in Canada. That's about as useful as summer wardrobe in Yellowknife.

And then, just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, the sales guy uttered these words: "And of course, voice mail, caller ID, call waiting and all that are extra."

Are you shitting me?! Caller ID is extra? What is this - 1988 or 2008? Because I didn't think this was still possible in 2008. I mean, the crappy minutes are one thing, the 3-year agreements are another, the fact that their phones die outside of Canada's borders are something else, but paying extra for caller ID? I suddenly realized why everyone here still uses land lines and answering machines.

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. So I just walked away.