Mobile phones

Mobile phones (called "hand phones" here) are a huge deal in Jakarta. Everybody has one. People don't talk on them for the most part, they text message, mainly because it's a lot cheaper. There is also a lot of one-upmanship as far as phone styles and tech.

When I first got here I wondered about the people I saw carrying mobile phones around almost as big as bricks -- you know, like the first ones that came out back in the 1980s. I wondered whether this wasn't some retro fad, but then one day I saw someone open one of them, to reveal an entire little computer inside. Pretty cool!