Telephone Booth

This bright red telephone booth in front of a store on Jalan Sulanjana is very eye-cathing. It looks somewhat like a British phone booth, a kitsch of it. Our ordinary telephone booths don't like this, of course. It has probably been placed there to attract customers to the store.

Like in many other countries, phone booths have become a rarity here since the boom of cellular phones. With more than 180 million cell phone subscribers (that's about 80 percent of Indonesian population) according to 2010 statistics, most people here now have and use cell phones more than they do fixed phones. Hence, most phone booths or pay phones have now become obsolete.

BTS - Base Transciever Station

With the booming of wireless or cellular telecommunication, this kind of tower called BTS (Base Transciever Station) becomes an everyday sight almost everywhere here now. For the sake of area coverage, they have sprung and been erected in nearly every strategic location you can think of: high-rise buildings, hills, etc., some of them even by disregarding their aesthetic effect on the overall landscape.

BTS basically connects the end-user telecommunication devices, such as the cell or mobile phone, with the network(s) that provides the service.

Mobile communication industry and services are among the fastest growing and most lucrative businesses in Indonesia. As of 2008 more than 50 percent of Indonesia's approximately 240 million people have used or had access to mobile or wireless telecommunication services. This penetration rate is predicted to grow exponentially and reach 80 percent by 2012.

I Love Traffic Jam?

"I love traffic jam!"

What?!!!

Yes! You did not misread it. That's the advertising slogal written on this car with wings parked on Jalan Diponegoro, in front of Gedung Sate gubernatorial office mansion, in Bandung.



What does it advertise and sell? Cell phones!

What do cell phones have to do with traffic jam? It's not that difficult to see.

I'm just wondering if this uniquely designed car is also found anywhere else.

Exam Time

These students of mine were doing their mid-term test. They look very serious, do they?

Written tests or exams are a common educational practice today, but it has not always been so. The first written tests known in history were conducted by the Chinese in the 6th century CE. In the West (read: Europe) tests used to be given orally and were conducted in Latin. According to historical records, the first written exams in Europe were conducted at Cambridge University, England, in 1792 (that's only slightly more than two hundred years ago).

I took this photo with my 2 megapixel camera phone, Nokia 5320 ExpressMusic, which I just bought about two weeks ago. I desatured the colors a bit in my image editor program, so the colors you see in this photo are not the original colors captured by the camera.