In one cheerful Monday morning, I was invited by an old friend of mine to have some chitchat amongst old friends back to our college days and to enjoy a big bowl of fruit salad (rujakan) together at her home. We promised to pretend as if we had been single again, at least for that day, meaning: we were not allowed to bring our children or our spouses to the meeting. Even the host had to ‘evacuate’ her children and her spouse to her in laws’ house so that we could have some free and fun girls’ talks (grin).

Like any other women, especially amongst moms, we had lots of gossip to share; from new fashion, children nurturing and gadget things. One of my friends (she liked living in style) showed off her new blackberry to us. She said that she had also joined a club of the ‘magic’ cell phone users. I questioned her here and there some of the cell phone’s features, I happened to read about the cell phone in one of magazines the other day. Guess what, she confessed that she did not really profess most of the cell phone’s features and how to maximize the using of the features, especially the push e-mail feature. So it is true then, that most of women are hopeless in gadget things, they like buying the latest and most sophisticated ones just for style.

While we were still talking about cell phones, the host offered us siomay bandung. She said there was a siomay street vendor in her neighborhood that had the yummiest siomay she ever tasted, very fish-tasty, just liked what they had in famous restaurants. And here we were, all of us liked eating very much, chorused together… ‘I want some… but, where is the siomay street vendor?’ ‘Take it easy girls,’ said the host, ‘the siomay vendor has a cell phone so we just call him and he will come to our place right away.’ Wow, it seemed now that everybody had cell phones; even the siomay street vendor had one.

Here another story from my friend; while she went to have her monthly shopping in one of hypermarkets the other day, she got an sms (short message service) from her servant at home - reminding her to buy some rice since they ran out of rice at home. She did not know before that the servant had a cell phone! While she was still shocked by the sms, the servant sent her another sms asking my friend to buy a bottle of shampoo for her. Gosh!

By the way, according to a research done by Polling Center in 2008, nowadays cell phone has penetrated to rural areas, around 42,6% of rural people have already had cell phones. The escalation is quite significant compared to 2006 where the percentage of cell phone users in rural areas is only 35,45%. In other words, a cell phone is not something that a rural people cannot buy anymore, moreover there are lots of provider company offering packages of a voucher card plus a cell phone in a very economical price these days. So don’t be surprised if someday you’ve got an sms from vegetable sellers or even medical herbs street vendors (tukang jamu) offering you their products. What a gadget world we have!(eky)