With a Flexi card from former state-owned Telkom, you can use public pay phones while travelling the Jakarta busway. I wonder who needs it anyway? Everybody travelling the busway has a handphone..Or maybe for those with empty batteries?
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When I was in Roxy Mas the other day, I got a ringtone from this guy, an antique Indonesian song called “Si Jantung Hati” (= something like “Lady’s Love”).
In the background the Nokia service centre where you have to draw a number - how orderly!
(This is a somewhat more personal note on my stay here in Jakarta, for friends and family, that’s why it’s in Dutch).
Het is gaaf om weer terug te zijn in Jakarta na 7 jaar. Er is niet heel veel veranderd, behalve dat ze in mijn afwezigheid ineens een speciale busbaan hebben aangelegd op verschillende trajecten, waardoor de vrijwel voortdurende file waar je voorheen in stond enigszins opgelost wordt. Ik zeg enigszins omdat ik gisteren met die ‘busway’ twee uur gedaan heb over een afstand die ik achteruit hinkelend nog sneller had kunnen doen. Er zijn verkiezingen gaande in town voor de nieuwe gouverneur en daarbij hoort schijnbaar dat iedere armerik met een bromfiets ingehuurd wordt om geheel spontaan en enthousiast als een oprecht politiek betrokken burger de straat op te gaan om campagne te voeren voor ofwel de ene ofwel voor de andere kandidaat. En als je geen brommer hebt, geen nood, je kunt altijd nog achterop bij een ander, als je maar een vlag in je hand houdt. En anders hijack je gewoon met z’n allen alle stadsbussen die er zijn, sleep je je drumstel het dak op (ja echt gezien!) en maakt er op die manier een feestje van.
De gelatenheid waarmee de Indonesiërs dit ondergaan is een van die prettige clichés die ervoor zorgen dat ik de situatie verder niet hoef uit te leggen. Het enige gebrom dat ik hoorde was iets in de trant van “als het zo moet hoeft die gouverneur van mij niet vervangen te worden”.
Hieronder twee fotos van de overstap op Dukuh Atas (een druk kruispunt van de wegen Jl. Sudiman en Galunggung). Er zat weinig beweging in. Gelukkig heb ik veel memory in mijn telefoon, heb een paar albums kunnen beluisteren op weg naar huis.
This really unclear picture is from Telset Magazine (edisi 74 July 2007, p.16), one of the many handphone magazines in Indonesia. It shows a queue of thousands of people waiting in front of the Ballroom Hotel Grand Melia in Jakarta on 13 June 2007. What are they waiting for? Is Michael Jackson making an appearance in Jakarta? Is someone giving away free stuff? Nope, these people are awaiting the launch of the new Nokia E90 Communicator. Indonesia is the first country in the world where this device was launched. This device really harbours all the functions that a mobile device nowadays possibly can have aboard. About 1100 invitees could buy the phone on the spot for around 11.000.000 Rp (almost € 900).
In an editorial, Magazine Telset does not fail to notice how ironic it is that so many people are queuing up for a device which costs 1 1/2 times the average Indonesian yearly income. In this country, thousands of people voluntary queue up for hours to be the first to have the E90, while still at this time many more people involuntarily queue up each day to get cooking oil. According to Telset editor, it can happen here because people feel it is prestigious (gengsi) to have such a device, which in turn increases the tendency to see handphones like this Communicator as a symbol of status and success.
Yesterday I visited Roxy Mas in the Cideng neighborhood just west of central Jakarta. According to most people Roxy Mas and neigboring Roxy Square is the main handphone center in Jakarta. The building itself does not look very ’prestigious’ or gengsi I am already adopting local terminology here ;).
Roxy Mas has 5 stories. The upper one is mostly a food court. Downstairs there are also some other businesses (clothing, books). The rest is almost completely filled with handphone shops of the following kinds (roughly in descending order of presence):
- Shops selling handphones, both new or bekas (second).
- Shops specialized in selling SIM cards of various telcom operators, both GSM and CDMA (and nomor cantik (beautiful numbers), which are more expensive) as well as pulsa (credit).
- Shops selling all kinds of accessoires (colored casings, phone holders, danglers).
- Repair shops (also doing other services like unlocking, etc.).
- Official (repair) centres of the major brands (Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, Motorola).
- Content providers: mainly ringtones. These are basically booths with a computer inside and a guy or girl next to it. He has a mp3 catalogue. For 5000 RP (€ 0,40) per song, he/she will transfer an mp3 of choice to your phone via a data cable, via memory reader, or if even that doesn’t work via bluetooth.
Most of the workers in Roxy Mas are young: between 16 - 25. Some shop owners are older. The majority is female. Also quite a lot of shop owners from Chinese descent. Visitors - overwhelmingly young too - were mostly wandering around together with a friend. It wasn’t particularly busy, maybe I have to get back on a weekend day when most people are free and go shopping for fun. One of the shops I visited looked just like a supermarket.
Lucky capture while drinking coffee in a downstairs coffee bar in Mall Ambassador. People at all tables seemed very engaged in their mobile media, yet people at two of the three tables where also very much communicating with others physically there. The dichotomous view of “absent presence” (being somewhere else than one’s physical place through the use of media) appears not so rigid in this situation. Here & elsewhere may be combined without any problems.
It’s great to be back in Jakarta! Yesterday I looked for a room for the coming weeks.
Today I went to Mall Ambassador, Jl. Satrio/Casablanca. Apparently one of the handphone hotspots in town! The neighborhood has changed a lot since my last visit 7 years ago: many new high rise buildings. In my memory, Ambassador used to be a chic mall with worldwide brand stores (Nike, Adidas, etc.). Now it has transformed into a bustling bazaar with many small businesses, many of them electronics and fashion.
Some pics below to give an impression of the visibility of mobile phone culture.
The last three days I have been at the Mobile Media 2007 conference, organized by Gerard Goggin and Larissa Hjorth. The conference was held at the University of Sydney from 2 - 4 July 2007. Some 120 people attended the conference, many of them belonging to the well-known researchers in the field of mobile media.
A wide range of papers were presented. Most of them empirical, focussing mostly on the modern Asian countries (China, Japan, Korea) and Australia. Also quite some theoretical work, e.g. about changes in time and place, locative media, mobile phone anxieties. Almost all empirical work was about teenagers. Most papers were also at the level of devices, not infrastructure.
I presented a paper about the mobile phone and changes in identity. You can download it here. That session was one of the few with enough time for some substantial debate after the presentation (someone had cancelled) Got some useful feedback on it.
I’ll try and write some more substantial things about the conference soon.
Some pics:
I’ve been in Australia for a few days now, and finally some time & energy to blog. My travel to Australia and Indonesia started out well. After a grueling 12 hour flight to Kuala Lumpur, a cheerful looking fellow approached me at the gate and told me “This is your lucky day, you are the lucky passenger number 163 million!! you will receive gifts…blabla” and asked me whether I had some time to spare at the airport. I had to wait 10 hours for my continuing flight to Sydney, so I thought this could be fun… The KLIA airport celebrated its 9th year anniversary, 2nd time best airport, and the arrival of its 163 millionth international passenger, which was…me!
I was taken to the VIP lounge, could take a nice shower, which was very welcome. Later that morning a crazy ceremony with band and directing manager airport present. Called on stage, photographers, film crews, interviews, got all kinds of presents, amongst which a return flight KL-Perth, free night stay in a KL hotel, some other stuff like coupons for food & drinks, perfume, etc.
A totally ‘ludic’ experience :). For those who read bahassa Malayu: an article in Berita Harian. Name spelled wrong, I did not come from Stockholm (never even been there), and some complete nonsense quotes about my name being called in the airplane and being afraid of having trafficked something forbidden… Cerita Harian…
Pics:
(via SmartMobs)
Former Nigerian minister of finance Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala promotes investing in Africa. On of the interesting examples she gives is the privatization and rapid growth of the telecom market in Nigeria, from 4300 landlines to over 32 million mobile phone subscriptions. Although she doesn’t mention the name, there is clearly a sense of “Glo with Pride” in her talk. Glo is a domestic mobile phone enterprise coming up second to South-African MTN and growing. Their slogan is appealing to Nigerian pride: “we can do it ourselves”.
(click to enlarge)
Skip to the section starting at 8:00 where she talks about the telecom and mobile phone market in Nigeria:
