Do you speak a language other than English? If so, you might be able to solve a mystery. Read on to find out more.
I got tired of tele-marketers calling me at home while I was having dinner, and although the National Do Not Call Registry helped, I still got unwanted calls. I decided to escalate the battle. There is a neat little gadget from RadioShack called the Quick Hang-up Announcement Module that plugs in between your phone jack and your phone. It lets you pre-record a message, and when your caller ID announces a tele-marketer, you push a button on the Module and it answers the call, plays your message, and hangs up. A neat, tidy, hands-off way of dealing with undesired callers. Push the button, and your problem is solved.
I’ll get to the mystery in a moment, just bear with me. The trick described above deals with a single call, but what can you do to prevent them from calling again? It turns out that there is a way. Have you ever called a disconnected number and wondered why the phone company plays the annoyingly loud “doo…dah…dee” tones before playing the recording “we’re sorry, but you’ve reached a number that has been disconnected”? It turns out that those “disconnected line” tones signal to the calling phone that the number is disconnected. Many of the auto-dialer systems used by tele-marketers will remove your number from their database when that signal is detected. There’s nothing to stop you from using the Quick Hang-up module to play back those tones at the beginning of your message! That way not only do you avoid talking to the tele-marketer, but you might also trick them into removing your phone number from their list.
This brings me to my mystery. I bought one of the RadioShack Quick Hang-up modules mentioned above, and took it home with the intention to record the “disconnected line” DTMF tones at the beginning of my message. However, out of curiousity I checked to see if there was a default recording already on the device, and lo and behold there was! The existing recording is of a person speaking over a lot of background of noise in a language that I don’t recognize. Is this a factory test message? A plea for help? A message from Leeloo, the Fifth Element? A label on the device says it was made in China; if you have any idea what this woman is saying, please post a comment below!
To hear the mystery recording, play Quick_Hang-Up_Mystery.mp3 [164kb].
wellll…one thing’s for sure, it’s not filipino 😀 i was holding my breath for a moment because i was afraid i’ll hear something that i’ll recognize.hehe
anyway, it sounds asian. thai or vietnamese? def not korean or japanese though.
(just passing by. hello from the philippines~)
I know I know, she is asking us to put all our unwanted change in an envelope and send it to the People’s United Union Radio of Shack (PUURS) to fund their annual picnic…
I concur with Aires, it’s definitely not Japanese.
A friend of a friend of a friend wrote via email:
“I’m definitely sure that it’s not Mandarin or Cantonese, as I don’t know
Thai and Vietnamese. So, not sure what language it is.”
Another friend of a friend of a friend via email:
“It should be ‘Mandarin’ but I can’t hear it clearly. Part of the sound should be: ‘I haven’t received my classmate’s letter for 2 months…I have to talk to you but you couldn’t hear.'”
i heard it too … it has to be testing to seeing the hang-up records o.k. … doesnt need to be anything really … just to test that it records and plays.
i was going to use it as my message so that callers would figure i was not an english household and stop calling.
it would have been cool for it to actually say dont call again in non english. but from the sound of it … it wasnt an outgoing information message. it seemed to start mid-sentance and go on like just talking.
It would have been cool for it to actually say dont call again in non english. but from the sound of it … it wasnt an outgoing information message. it seemed to start mid-sentance and go on like just talking.