Texting like a champ
The Avenue Crew put their texting skills to the test
By Adam Trinh
Photography by Anthony Charron and Adam Trinh
We may be able to weave stories and interviews on the fly, but the Canadian Texting Championship posed a difficult question to answer. How fast can you text?
Sponsored by LG Electronics, the competition is touring across Canada, inviting the masses to use one of their new cell phones and type in a sentence as fast and accurate as possible.
The fastest texter gets a chance to compete for $25,000 at the National Championship in Toronto.
Colleague and ally Tony Charron and I were up for the challenge and set a course to Chinook Mall, the site of the battle. The winner of the media challenge portion of the championship gets to donate $1,000 to a charity of their choice.
Not knowing what to expect, we were greeted by a group of cheerleaders and the planners of the event. Fuelled by a fruity and delicious protein shake, I quickly sized up my opponents and felt confident in my abilities.
First up was Tony. After several (count: 5) false starts the battle was on. Tony posted a respectable 22.86 seconds for a seven word sentence. However, the bar would quickly be raised, as the next competitor obliterated Tony's score, posting a time of 20.17 seconds.
Now, the pressure was all on me to represent the magazine and Red Point Media as a whole.
Frank Lee, the LG PR representative calls me up to the booth for my turn, and "So, do we text a lot?"
I was immediately taken back by the phrasing of the question and probably over-analysed it. Did he mean we as in, we as individuals Asians or we, as a way of sounding polite and inclusive? Baffled, I quickly choose the latter and responded modestly "Sorta, at least a couple times a week."
In a flash, I was fixated on the keyboard. All I could hear was the friendly, yet bothersome applause from the cheerleaders chanting my name. Having never used a full QWERTY keyboard on a phone before, I'll admit I was rusty.
Then it was all over. "Adam T: 22.4 sec."
Fail. My days as texting champ ended before they began.
The crowned king would later turn out to be the Shaw TV camera guy Brendan, texting a day record of 17.38 seconds. Receiving a giant cheque (I've always wanted one of those) for $1,000, he donated it to the Alberta Breast Cancer Foundation saying "there are a lot of people with cancer out there and they could always use more money," a valiant speech for a valiant win.
We left shortly after, reassuring ourselves that we tried our best and that there was always next year.
