A family in Taipei was perplexed to find a sudden increase in their telephone bill over a three-day period. The puzzle was solved when the family’s twin brothers admitted they had been burning up the telephone lines with late-night talks with their girlfriends.
The two first-year junior-high school students surnamed Liu (劉) said they have been dating girls in their class and were calling them up every night, chatting away until they fell asleep from exhaustion.
Their mother said an employee of Chunghwa Telecom called to say that something seems to be wrong with her home telephone, when for three days last month, the fees added up to more than NT$12,000.
The mother was surprised to discover it was her twins running up the phone bill, and amazed to hear their explanation.
“We are two handsome boys and many girls are infatuated with us. So we have lots of calls to make and calls to return,” the young Casanovas said.
They are also dating girls in their class, without their parents’ knowledge.
Since students are on winter break and the twins were unable to meet up with their girlfriends, they used the home telephone and mobile phone for their talks late at night, after their parents had gone to bed.
The brothers said the lovey-dovey exchanges were tiring, with either the boys or the girls falling asleep on the phone.
“So we did not hang up the phone until waking up in the morning,” they said.
“[Talking to the girls on the phone] is so romantic. It’s like we are actors and actresses in a TV drama series,” one of the twins said.
The two also went to live for several days at their grandmother’s place in Hsinchu County during the winter break.
Their relatives also checked their phone bills and were alternately exasperated and amused when they found the two boys had also racked up about NT$5,000 using their house phone.
When adding up the damage since December, the Liu family said the twin brothers had piled up a phone bill of more than NT$30,000, which is a higher amount than the starting salary of a college graduate.
Their father said he was considering transferring them to another school.
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