Ding dong, bloody hell
It seems that I've always been a Guardian reader and I regularly use their online articles to give a theme for my posts here. I hope my editorial perspective is clear ~ I'm a Brit abroad. If there are echoes to be heard then this may well mean that 'modern' life is rapidly encroaching from the so-called developed world.
That the Guardian now has
9,000,000 unique visitors per month including me to its online edition, is testament to the power of the Internet. If only this was true here. I've moaned before, and no doubt will again, about the intermittent connections from my ISP, Indosat, and that my incoming mail is more than 80% spam*.
What gets my goat though is that more concern is shown by Indosat and Telkom for the vast profits that can be made from handphone users. Too many meetings I go to are interrupted by
ringtone muzak or the need to read and write an SMS message. And it is muzak too. A good friend of mine is regularly interrupted with a midi version of
Recuerdos de la Alhambra by Torrega. What's wrong with the Segovia version I regularly ask him.
Now I am well aware that the majority of meetings are a complete waste of time devoted to someone reading a press release or to deciding the venue and refreshments for the next one, but it's still bloody rude to switch off the people you can see in order to switch on to one's girl/boy friend. My friend
the Reveller agrees.
I'd like to ask every one of my readers who possesses one of these fashion accessories whether you actually need it. Admittedly I once missed a rendezvous in Gambir station due to the lack of one and once I was able to ask 'er indoors to bring a spare pair of glasses to a soccer tournament to replace a broken pair. That's twice in ten years. Is there an alternative to instant communication? Ask yourself what you did before you got one. Try pre-planning, sending an e-mail or postcard. Or waiting until you're comfortably seated with a cup of Java or glass of beer next to your office or home phone. Consider too that one of these gadgets costs more than the statutory minimum monthly wage for an Indonesian family of four.
Consider too that, if you're a man who keeps his phone in a trouser pocket in standby mode that you may be
lowering your sperm count.
And if you really think that it's cool to stand at the top or bottom of an escalator, in the middle of a sidewalk or anywhere that you can block free movement and shout your inanities because you can't hear the person who's just rung you, then think again. You're a self-obsessed little ______________ (
fill in the blank) and you really piss people off.
Jakartass values his privacy (as, once again, does the
Reveller). I know this may seem to be a
non sequiter given the public nature of a blog, but if folk want to get hold of me they can always leave a message. If the spammers can, why can't everyone else?
Having got that off my chest, let me congratulate Inspector Sands for the 20,000 page views and 100 posts in just over three months for his
All Quiet In The East Stand. He's a Charlton fan like me which partly accounts for the 3,000 page views I've had in the past three months and to note that statistics show that this is also my 100th post. If you're a regular reader, many thanks for sticking with me. And if you're not, why not?
*There is an admirable freeware programme
Avirmail which enables you to look at messages whilst they're still on the server rather than downloading them. It has a spam filter but it's quicker to just delete the crap.
|
