I sometimes still get baffled when it comes to the subject of making or receiving cheap phone calls.
Both acts results in me enquiring or worrying about costs.
It's not a case of penny-pinching, but more because for a majority of my childhood having a decent phone conversation required effort and cunning.
As a Melbourne teenager with meagre funds - in the days when the sleekest mobile often resembled a plastic brick - using a payphone with no coins was an act of great determination.
Back then some people were adept at exploiting a loophole in Australian public phones where unpaid local phone calls would immediately click off after five seconds.
This resulted in a long series of calls to relatives informing them when to pick us up from the train station.
Those with quick tongues could express their message in five calls.
For those such as myself, who also had a minor case of the stutters, it was an exhausting experience for both parties.
When the phone booth gravy-train ran out with the installation of a new generation of public phones - no doubt followed by a slew of public complaints - my friends and I had to be more resourceful.
Luckily we heard of a distant cousin who purchased a much- coveted Nokia.
However his pride at his latest acquisition soon became a nightmare, as in a space of a week he became a walking receptionist.
He would receive phone calls from relatives, friends and random people enquiring whether he was with a certain other person.
He would also be approached by random "friends of friends" and asked for his phone so they could call their mothers for a lift home or to order a pizza for pickup.
Financial constraints also dictated that communication with relatives overseas called for creative measures.
In my former stint in Abu Dhabi as an eight-year-old I remembered our family gathering around a tape recorder where we would record a "tape message".
The logic was that for less than it cost to make a five-minute phone call to Eritrea or Sudan, we could purchase a 60-minute tape to record our well wishes and send it by post.
The problem was my parents' method to ensure all the tape was used up: each family member was given an allotted period of time to speak, even if that person had nothing to say.
This often resulted in minutes of my inane musings about how I was fond of the colour blue and how I enjoyed watching The Smurfs.
In a way, I miss those days, as phone conversations often had an added resonance.
Then again, it also feels great to call my sister overseas ... just because I can.