In Your (60s) Neighbourhood, Where You Gonna Call?

The inspiration for the title of this article came from Ray Parker Junior's very catchy 1984 hit, the Ghostbusters:



However, I must confess that the inspiration for writing this article came from Chun See's article on a similar topic.

In the 1960s, whenever we "city folks" wanted to call someone, we would use the phone of the coffeeshop located below our block.


The coffeeshop owner was nice enough not to charge us for the use of the phone. (But then again, my mother paid in another way via her illegal chap ji ki bets placed through the coffeeshop owner.) The numbers "9" and "0" were locked with a copper padlock so that people could not make unauthorised IDD and trunk calls which required the dialling of a "0".

The telephone looked exactly like the one in the illustration above but was black in colour. On its front (bottom portion) was emblazoned a gold-coloured logo with the letters STB which was superimposed onto an image of a flying swallow, if I remember correctly. The letters stand for Singapore Telephone Board, I think. (Telecommunications, both the capability and the word, may not have been invented then.)

I would not be surprised at all if people of the younger generation today tell me that they do not know how to use the telephone. So how would a telephone number be dialled then? You must follow adhere to the following dozen steps strictly:

1. Make sure no one is using the phone. (Queue for your turn, if necessary.)

2. Ask the coffeeshop owner for permission to use the phone.

3. If permission is given, lift up the handset.

4. Listen for the presence of a dialling tone in the ear piece.

5. Dial the first digit by poking your digit index finger into the hole marked with the correct number behind it.

6. Turn the dial clockwise with your finger until it stops at the metal catch at the 5-o'clock position. (Try as you might, the dial could not be turned anti-clockwise.)

7. Unplug your finger from the hole. (The dial will return to its original position.)

8. Repeat steps 5 to 7 until all the numbers are dialled.

9. Listen for ringing tone in the ear piece and answering party's "Hello".

10. If connected, say what you have to say and keep your conversation short (less than 3 minutes).

11. When call ends, replace handset onto the cradle of the phone.

12. Last but not least, remember to thank the coffeeshop owner for using his phone unless you are not going to do it ever again.

As you can see, the elaborate dialling process itself could take up to half a minute or more. Luckily in those days, local telephone numbers were only 6-digit long.

Although I am not an engineer by training, I can tell you that there was another way with which you could get connected without ever touching the dial. How? You use the cradle instead of the dial. Follow Steps 1 to 4 above but instead, Step 5 onwards is as follows:

5. Tap the cradle in quick succession the same number of times as the first digit of the telephone number.

6. Pause for about a second.

7. Tap the cradle in quick succession the same number of times as the second digit of the telephone number.

8. Repeat Steps 5 to 7 until all the numbers have been entered.

You should get a connection if you have done the process correctly if the coffeeshop owner has not stopped you by now. I know it works because I have tried it before. This is because the telephones in those days work on a "pulse dialling" system. (You can't do that with the later "tone dialling" system which is still in use today, if I am not wrong.) The pulse dialling occurs in Step 7 if you use the dial, and both Steps 5 and 7 if you use the cradle.

It was certainly a good thing that we finally got our own telephone when we moved to our new Haig Road flat in the mid-70s.

Update on 20 Nov 2009:

I have found a National Archives photo of the black telephone described above on Laokokok's blog here:

Diagnosing My Slow Internet Connection

I have been rather busy lately and have not been actively blogging. Read on and you'll know why.

Two years ago, I signed up with Starhub's MaxOnLine (a local ISP). At the same time, I also installed home wireless networking. This required the connection of a wireless broadband router which sat between the modem and one of my PCs. (The PC was connected to the router by a cable. However, if I like, I could also choose to go completely wireless, i.e. all PCs connecting wirelessly.)

For some service packages, the Linksys WRT54G router (photo above) was bundled as a "free gift" by MaxOnLine at that time. However, I had to buy my own router as I was already given a "nearly free" desktop PC. I decided to buy the same model of router because I thought it would be the most suitable one for MaxOnLine. Otherwise Starhub wouldn't have bundled it, right?

After some trial and error (more of the latter than the former) I eventually managed to set up wireless networking successfully. Don't pray pray, okay? I even secured my network with 128-bit WEP (Wireless Encryption Protocol) although I might not know exactly how it worked.

Ever since then, I consistently experienced difficulty in loading some websites regardless of which PC I used. Some of the problematic websites were:

1. Wikipedia e.g. the bicycle page;

2. Blogsites hosted by Wordpress. (That explains why I didn't visit Wee Kiat's and Laokokok's blog as often as I would have liked to);

3. My hotmail account;

4. Youtube videos

Oddly though, I had no problem accessing other websites. For example, my Gmail account was alright. Blogs hosted by Blogspot could also be displayed normally.

I was really at my wit's ends. I tried asking relatives, friends, colleagues and yes, even IT sales people for advice. Some people told me it could be due spyware or viruses which had infected my PCs. Others said it could be due to my aged PCs, my ISP or the website itself. Yet others told me it could be the fault of the router or modem.

I recently got a "nearly free" laptop when I recontracted my MaxOnLine subscription for another 28 months. I also bought a new Compaq Quad-processor desktop. Immediately after setting up the laptop and desktop, I tried accessing the problematic websites. Yes, the problem was still there so it could not be due to viruses, spyware or a slow PC.

So I decided to call the MaxOnLine hotline 1633 for advice. The automated answering system said something like this:

"If you are calling us because of a problem connecting to the Internet via a router, try connecting directly to the cable modem, by-passing the router. Power off and on the modem and try again. If you could access the Internet this way, then the problem could be due to your router. You may want to contact the router's vendor for further technical assistance."

Following the instructions, I tried again. Indeed, the problem went away. So it must be the fault of the router.

I googled for more information on the router and found this very useful Linksys Customer Help Site. After searching further, I arrived at this relevant page.

I tried adjusting the security setting of the browser and the MTU values for the problematic websites as well as opening the port for secured websites but all to no avail.

At the bottom of the page, it said that if all the above didn't work, I should upgrade the firmware of the router. That I did and voila, the problem was solved!