In Tokyo several months ago, I bought a cordless telephone with the ability to handle voice mail.
I brought it back to Hong Kong and found to my considerable dismay that the voice-mail function does not work. When someone rings me, the phone does not know when the call ends and records to the end of the tape.
However, the cordless handset works, even if my friends think I am sitting in a tunnel with laryngitis.
Recently, however, I got hold of a Siemens Dect phone, called the Gigaset 1010. Like a standard cordless phone, it has a base which plugs into the wall. However, the Siemens phone lets you roam further - 50 to 300 metres from the base, compared with 10 to 20 metres for other cordless phones, according to Siemens officials.
Setting it up was easy. I just plugged it in as per the instructions and waited for the battery to charge, which takes about 18 hours.
After that, all I had to do was connect the phone to the line into my house.