week 8

Instant Messaging, Internet Relay Chat, Skype. That was the topic of our last session. And these are very important keywords for an overseas student like me.
The first time I was for a longer period abroad was in 2004. At that time I called my family with special phone cards which made it cheaper to call from Italy to Germany. My friends got mails and both family and friends got from time to time postcards and letters from me. Because I didn´t want to make the internet bill of my hostfamily so expensive, first I wrote my mails with winword before I went online to mail them – very complicated.
This time it´s different. I skype regularly with my family and friends, sometimes with video sometimes without video. It´s a cheap alternative to calling. My room mate and I, we have a homepage where our friends can read what happened the last time and see some images of our adventures. I write postcards, mails, sms, I chat with friends or post on the facebook/studivz pages of them. But I don´t write letters anymore. It´s a pity because letters are very nice. I have still boxes full of letters of my first stay abroad. Letters are very special: the content is much more deeper and more important than the content of postcards or mails. People think longer about what they will write than they do when they write mails. The handwriting is unique and tells you a lot about the adresser – male or female? Old or young? Is it usual white paper or is it colourful? Maybe with some drawings? Put the author some perfume on it? A letter is a visual and haptic experience, but it can be an olfactory experience as well.
To my 20th birthday I got a letter from a very very close friend. On the envelope stood ´Open carefully!´. How could I open a letter otherwise? I opened it…carefully, but not in the way my friend wanted me to. In the end my floor was full of confetti. To open a special letter can be an experience that you will never forget. But to open a mail feels always the same. Nothing special, nothing unique about it. It´s also easier to delete a mail than to throw a letter away, especially when it´s handwritten. As fast as you can write a mail, sms etc as fast you can delete it. But a letter: somebody took time to write it, it took time to get to the addressee. It´s not so easy to throw a letter away. What makes them to very good souvernirs.

Week 6

Beeb beeb, beeb beeb…the pinking comes from my mobile phone. I use it as an alarm-clock. Consequently my mobile phone was the whole night on. Other people put their cell phones off when they go to bed but not me. In case of an emergency I want to be accessible. But what is an emergency? For my friends it´s an emergency when they are on a party and I am not. So they call me in the middle of the night although I am sleeping. And five minutes later they call the second time and again and again…then I put my celly off.
I don´t know how many people have the number of my cell phone but they are a lot. In comparison there are just a few people who have the number of my landline phone, just family members and some very close friends. The reason: my home is my privat zone. When I want to get away from it all I can put my mobile phone off or in a silent modus. Then I am just accessable for my kith and kin.
My celly shows me who is calling: Is it a friend? My brother? Or my boss? In Germany I had a side job. My boss knew that I am a student and that I have a lot of stuff to prepare for my classes. He called me all the same. Because it´s so hard to say NO to somebody I often didn´t answer the phone. Later I told him that I was in class or that I was in the gymnasium and that I couln´t answer the phone.
Almost everybody has a cell phone and some people have more than one. In conclusion many people (especially bosses) expect that you are always achievable. In former times you were half the day on the job and half the day off the joby. That´s over. Nowadays you are ALWAYS on the job. Because you are always accessable – independent where you are and what you are doing. A friend told me that her boss even called her when she and her husband were…(how Peter would say) friendly to each other.
Okay, when I have an important concern I expect as well that the other person answers the telephone. And I wonder why this person has a mobile phone when he/she doesn´t answer the phone. I see, I should be appriciative of it. Espacially because I don´t always answer the phone as well. And I don´t want to desturb somebody in that way her boss interrupted my friend and her husband.