In LA

In Beijing, when you enter a bank or an area with ATM banking machines, sometimes you’re presented with not just one type of ATM machine, but instead two types of ATM (one local-only and one that works with foreign accounts), a machine or two for cash deposits, and maybe a new multi-purpose machine with two card slots that looks more like an information kiosk than an ATM. There’s one near my apartment that features a fancy touchscreen and graphics that wouldn’t be out of place in a video game menu, which can apparently be used to buy subway tickets, pay the electric bill, and if I’m guessing correctly as to the meaning of other buttons on the display, pay for medical services, airfares, and music? I’m not sure how any of those functions work, but given how much fun I had last time I went to the bank to pay the power bill, I figured I’d try the scary touchscreen machine out.

I’d seen the machine used once before, but didn’t really remember how it all worked. Before touching the machine, I tried to anticipate the possible problems I could have and decide on a course of action.

1. I can’t read enough Chinese (I’ve struggled through interfaces I couldn’t understand before, both professionally and for fun, so this minor detail wouldn’t alone stop me)
   
2. Due to problem 1, I might accidentally enter my PIN number when the machine wants to know how much power I’d like to buy, and end up buying over 100,000 kilowatts? (hence my decision that if the machine asks for a number, and I can’t tell whether it wants my PIN or the amount of power, I’ll enter the smaller of the two numbers — if I entered the small number and instead it had wanted my PIN it should display an error message that I could hopefully suss out with the help of a dictionary)
   
3. Which card to place in the slot when? (hopefully it will be obvious, likely bank card first in order to do the financial transaction, then the power card to be recharged)

As it turns out, all my guesses were right, I bought 400kw and only had to deal with a couple of minutes of button pushing and waiting, and when I inserted the newly charged card into the power meter at home it showed that the power had been added. What a nice experience. A huge improvement on the bank queue.

I may later go and take a photo of the machine and add it to this post.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 3rd, 2006 at 11:51 pm and is filed under China. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.