Too Technology Dependent: Pen’s rare precedence over keyboard
The Last Resort
After calling both my aunts in seek of my brother’s most recent number, to no avail, I finally sucked it in and pulled out a pen to compose a snail mail letter! Left with no other choice, I needed to get in touch with my half brother whom which I haven’t talked with since last May. I lost his (new) mobile phone number as I apparently didn’t save or write it down anywhere when he last called several months ago.
Though there is still several months before my sister’s family’s confirmed flight arrives, I felt an urgency to re-establish oiled family channels–the sooner I get back in touch with my brother, Bancha, the better as meeting him will be one of my sister’s itinerary priorities a long with Chiang mai and Phuket visit in their two week vacation.
Just trying to get a hold of my Aunt Sombat, who likely has my brother’s most recent number, proved to be difficult. I tracked her home and factory (which she owns) numbers from the internet and called them all with no answer (granted it was about 7pm. The last number finally had someone answer. My 16-17 year old nephew, Gao. We chatted for a few minutes, him telling me about how he’s planning to go to Uni soon. Last time I saw him, he was just coming out of primary school!
I ultimately persuaded him to give me his aunt’s (a cousin who doesn’t seem to like me) mobile number since he didn’t seem to see his grandma much and didn’t have her mobile number either. The call to the cousin led to no where as I expected other than she didn’t have my brother’s number and was too busy at the moment to ask her mom who was away. Since she didn’t seem to have her own mother’s personal mobile number (more likely didn’t want to give it to me) I told her I’d call her back tomorrow at noon while she was around her mom, but not sure if I’ll actually get to speak with my aunt, Sombat tomorrow or not. I’m reluctant to deal with her daughter (my cousin) or other factory worker middle people, who’ve treated me like dirt in the past.
For a brief spell, I was stressing about how I was going to get in touch with him to announce our sister’s first ever trip to the motherland, Thailand come December in the case that I couldn’t speak directly with my aunt or that she turns out not to have a recent number.
And then it finally rang on me to simply write the letter to tell my brother to call me back–as both my sister and my son’s momma had initially suggested.
The first thought when I finally decided to follow through with the snail-mail route was to type the letter I was going to send…and then I realized how lazy and unauthentic that would be. My habits have changed in so little time.
Only a few years ago, a pen and paper was part of my nature–from postcards, letters, to journals, plans, and ideas all were habitual to me–now I find myself ever reliant on a keyboard as my prized and preferred vessel of correspondence and communication.
Not that I only started typing recently–for I’ve been swiftly typing away since my 7th grade typing class 12 years ago–just that I’ve noticed myself actually requiring motivation to write a bulk of anything with ink and paper anymore. When I moved to Thailand in 2002, I maintained a steady balance using the pen and keyboard, though, as I didn’t even have a cell phone then, I recorded most of my thoughts via pen in a journal with the long email every week or so.
Not so much the case any more as my fingers see most of their writing powers utilized by digital keys (on a keyboard or keypad) rather than a cylinder tool backed with ink.
So I wrote the letter, on a blank white A4 piece of paper in mostly Thai language with green ink. It wasn’t so bad. The traditional spell checker called for me to have the dictionary handy though I still may have miss-spelled a few words in the flow of it. Tomorrow I shall send it off and perhaps I will try to call my aunt again mid day just in case.
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September 13th, 2007 at 12:33 am
Beautiful Thai writing!
Peace,
~Chani
http://thailandgal.blogspot.com
September 13th, 2007 at 7:44 pm
Update:
So it turns out that I didn’t have to send the letter after all, but at least it was worth exercising my Thai penmanship.
My brother ended up calling me today…which was kind of peculiar considering he said that he simply had a dream and decided to call.
I think the more likely scenario was that my cousin, whom which I expressed urgency over the phone yesterday, spoke with my aunt who must have called him and relayed that I was trying to contact him…not sure exactly why he wouldn’t admit so, but anyway, what is important is that I am back in contact with him again.