New Caledonia's Online Phonebook

A resource we use all the time here in New Caledonia is its phonebook. It contains helpful maps that show all of Noumea's one-way streets (no other maps seem to do so!), restaurant advertisements (it is hard to know about them otherwise, strangely enough) and of course professional addresses, like doctors and dentists.

I had never been much of a phonebook user (I seem to look everything up on line), but moving to New Caledonia changed things. New Caledonians are from the old offline world - and living here one realises how much faster a simple phonebook is (find it, open it up, figure out the French for "doctor" - medecin- and away you go).

As our phonebooks are packed up and on a slow boat to China (they make great souvenirs - and serve as proof that we were here!), I am now using the online version of the phonebook. Though helpful, it is somehow not as good.

With a paper version, you can see tangential and yet relevant companies and services. Online, you have to know the name of the company or the category -- and the categories are bizarre here. I can never seem to get my category right. Plus, you cannot type in an address to find a company (which is very useful as you may know the street but not the company name).

Maybe the online version just isn't user-friendly enough yet - or maybe I expect too much.

In any case, if any of you are looking for friends, family or companies in New Caledonia, go to www.opt.nc, right-hand side.

• If you are looking for a person, type in the last name under "nom", the first name under "prenom", select the city and click on "rechercher".
  
• If you are looking for a company, click on "pages professionelles" and you will be taken to a page where you can type in the name of the company, or a category and the city.
  

Have fun - and let us know if you find the online version easy or not.