Recently, I just found my new hobby, collecting postcards. Actually, long time ago when I was on Junior High School, I collected stamps but now I lost all my collection since I moved to Makassar (capital city of South Sulawesi). I am interested in collecting postcard since last year when I participated in a work camp in Prambanan Temple. I worked with international volunteer from USA, Belgium, Germany, and France. In the end of work camp, usually we share something as keepsake. Then, I got two postcards from my Belgian friends with Brussels Atomium and Grand Place background theme.

Since that time, I found that collecting postcard is a unique hobby since not a lot people does it. Above and beyond, I do like the portrait in the postcard that usually shows the beautiful places or something exclusive in certain place. Also, it’s not easy to get various kinds of postcards because the picture is unlike from each other; the image depends where the postcard is printed. So I am quite sure that you will not find any Borobudur postcard in any other place except in Yogyakarta or Central Java. So, it’s fairly challenging for me to collect postcard from all over the world. What's more, postcard is important as we can know how a city looked at a particular time in history as well as social history.

Besides, it would be more meaningful if you say hi to our friends through postcard even though instantly we can send by email and I can say that saying something through postcard to your girlfriend or boyfriend is more romantic (even though I never give it to my ex-gf, lol) Don’t you think so??? Just compare if you receive a letter through e-mail and by mail (postcard). I believe that you will be more interested in reading and keeping the postcard.

I also have a special mission to amass postcard; I wanna go to every single place that’s printed in the postcard all over the world. That’s my big passion! Because the only things that you can do to get postcard from another country is going to that country or just ask your friend to send you a postcard from their country. But it would be more memorable and fantastic if and only if we can get a postcard by ourselves, meaning that we go to all countries and grab its postcard. Yeah!!!

I am a bit lucky because I have got German and Singaporean postcard that I got by myself. Yes, when I went there, I spent about 10 euro to purchase postcards. I hope I will get occasion to go off to another country in order I can obtain postcards again… (Strongly wish!!!)

Some of my collections

While enjoying my new hobby, I also never overlook to search about everything related with my hobby. I’ve asked Mr. Google and find that my hobby is called Deltiology. It comes from Greek, deltion and logia. Deltion means writing table or letter, and logia means science. It’s remarkable to learn about deltiology since it can bring you to the times of yore when you look at the old postcards that enclose old pictures.

What I am doing now to add my postcard collection is join postcrosser. It's a project that allows anyone to receive postcards (real ones, not electronic) from random places in the world (see http://www.postcrossing.com/). I also ask to my friends who live in abroad to exchange postcards. It’s the only thing I can do now because going to overseas is not possible to do now, heheheheh…lol

For that reason, if you guys want to exchange postcard with me, just contact me and I will give you my address and send you Indonesian postcard as soon as possible. Anybody wants to prove that receiving postcard is more romantic and meaningful?