v-oye-pe

So I went on a girls night last night.

And E is out from Egypt! Thank God for it really.
I'm kind of in this funny haze, so it was good to be around my best friends.

I'm seeing someone tonight for an after work drink. Haven't seen this guy in about 10 years and he's in town. Should be interesting.
Then I'm heading off to FTV for a final thrash with Dick before he heads back to Australia.

It's amazing how in a world so big, with people dotted all over the globe, never before has it been so easy to keep in touch. The world has never been so small. In all manners speaking.
Imagine back in the good old days when my [Royal] French grandmother used to have to catch flying pigeons and whack shit on its leg to convey a message.

And even then, you don't really know if your 'homing pigeon' is going to get there. It doesn't exactly come with a money back guarantee. What if you send it off to say, Standerton, and it decides it doesn't dig that place so much? (And frankly, the pigeon wouldn't be alone in that opinion.)

And so your message, which could've been Don't worry honey, I'm not dead, actually lands up in Hillcrest?

Certainly we are in an age where web cameras and all that jazz makes life a helluva lot easier to almost be in the same room as a friend. Fuck, if I'd had a webcam and VoIP around when I lived in France 9 years ago, I maybe wouldn't have felt so homesick in the first 3 months.

I'm just saying.

When the Dove lived in Palma, she could walk around her place showing me the cobbled street below her balcony and she could practically talk to me just like she talked to me the day before. For hours. Not a wild catch up session, it would be conversation like,
“Dude. I ate carrots last night and had an allergic reaction which involved all of my hair falling out and me swearing like a drunk priest. How was your day?”

I chatted to the Dove all the time, it was like I knew exactly what was crappening while she lived in Mallorca. The best is I could really almost be there and know where and how she lived; her entire environment.

My Brit-Belgian e-pal showed me the inside of his [very pretty] flat too. How cool is that? Although there are still some drawbacks the VoIP engineers need to work on: I couldn't open a bottle and he couldn't really help me out. (Could you open this please. Oh. Yeah.)

So I just wonder how long it will take to be able to smell, touch, taste through a computer? I'm not being lewd – seriously for once I'm not being lewd – but say the Dove or the Brelgian (you like that?) was eating a chocolate and could just hand it over for me to taste? Through the ether?

Imagine somehow the cloud could take and give chocolate? Like a matrix? Or I could smell...I dunno...Spanish people...from Dove's apartment, over Skype?

Anyway even if we can't do that for another 3850 years, VoIP and web cameras sure beat those days when I was 12 and had to write a fucking long and monotonous hand letter to my penpal in New Zealand.

Why my mother enthused about this, is beyond me.
(But Peas! A real life PEN PAL! From NEW ZEALAND!........'But do I have to?')

My hand would ache, and it was dull as shit.
Hey Cody, how are you, I'm fine thanks, South Africa is rad, hope New Zealand isn't boring as fuck is also rad, sorry this took 79 weeks to get to you, but you know the whole postal service vibe....so it's been about 3 years since you got my last letter, your balls must've dropped since then right?

Par Avion or By Airmail never gave me a sense of what this dude even looked like. For all I know he could've had a sweating problem and had a bunion on his face.

Just saying.

Getting to know new people and keeping in touch with people is not only a cinch, it's unacceptable if you don't keep in touch. This, like cellphones, poses its own admin, but you get what I'm throwing down.

It's just when Skype makes your mate all pixelised and they freeze in an unflattering pose, or maybe they're just low resolution, you know we still have a long way to go until smelevisions.