I’ve been noticing the way my Indonesian friends send Eid greetings from time to time.

The oldest I can remember is by sending paper cards by post. I still remember the joy of card shopping - choosing the pretties pictures and picking the wisest words, usually during the last week of Ramadan. My father used to order a bunch of these cards, which looks more professional than cute or pretty, to be sent to his colleagues. “You get what you give. meaning, in returns, we also received cards from friends and family. I’d say this media in comparison to other media mentioned here is the more personal, less practical and less environmentally friendly.

Couple of years later came mobile phones with it’s fame replacing all those cards with text messages. Phone call is just for personal VIPs because having to call and say the same words over and over again to many random acquaintances is just too much to do. Not enough by simply saying “EID MUBARAK, people invent the art of Eid text messaging that to my knowledge can be categorized as wise words, poetic (pantun included), pictures made of characters, and jokes.
Confession: I’m a not so good Eid text messages artist and I used to exchange messages I received from one friend to sent it to another.
Imagine how much money those cellular providers made during those days!

The internet gives us more media alternatives to send Eid Greetings. E-cards is quite popular back then. It’s just like the paper cards, except that it’s electronic, and the picture can move, sometimes added by sound and some of them are free. Okay it’s nothing like the paper cards.

But, the most advanced technology in Eid Greetings is probably via Facebook. Here’s some of the things that you can do with it:

1. Write the greeting on your status and sort of just wish all of your friends will see it and so the job is done.
2. Send the greetings to friend’s personal walls, which takes more times.
3. Upload pictures that act as Eid cards and tag friends whom you wish to send the greetings to.
4. Write a note and tag friends to whom you’re writing to.

EID MUBARAK! May Allah accept (the good deeds) from you and from us.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 20th, 2009 at 8:14 am and is filed under events, technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.