Dear Earthlings (and disguised Spacelings),
Browsing through piles of old file and folders from my primary and secondary school days, I came across the most valuable one among the others. It was the folder of my former pen-pals! Most of the memorable stuff and letters were actually dated more than a decade ago which somehow occurs to me how old I have turned now. Hek!
I do realize how this pen-pal thingy is nowadays considered as old-school (old but fashionably cool, perhaps)? Sure it is for today's teens are no longer lack in options to seek the windows to another world. They have Windows Vista, XP and 7 to do all that. During my time, the only window we had was some kind of a pen-pal organization. And mine was International Youth Service (IYS) which was based in Finland.
It was founded in 1952 and it arranged pen-pals among young people all over the world. Of course they still charged a fee for all their services but it was not that expensive for a kid, though. I think it was around USD1.20 at my time in 1998. We were given a simple form to fill up but most of the complicated handling parts such as posting and converting to Ringgit currency were all done by teachers.
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| 'The IYS pamphlet-form in Yours Truly's safekeeping' |
Unfortunately the organization was closed down in 2008 (no thanks to internet) but I am sure lots of people had benefited from its 56 years of service. Anyway I have just found out there is a tribute to IYS made by its former users (click HERE). Reading some of the comments have surely surprised me when some of them are still keeping in touch with each other while a few got married to their own pen-pals!
I do remember most of my pen-pals; well I even had a bestie among them (well, sort of). Her name was Irene Morales Dominguez from Madrid (Spain) and she was the same age of mine. It was her to first write me in June of 1998 and I still remember how excited I was to receive an air-mail from a country outside Malaysia. Frankly speaking, I never had one before hers.
We exchanged fancy letters telling all sort of things such as dreams in life. It was beyond amazing to think that a part of my teen life was chronicled in letters; just like the story of Mary and Max if I must say. The exhilaration was pure to us especially when we attached letters with photo, postcard, sticker and stuffs. You know, all the itsy bitsy things that could make a girl's day bright. Teehee!
Unfortunately we lost contact somewhere in 2002. I could not remember why but I guess she must have changed her home address so my letters did not make to her hands safely. I did try to find her on Facebook using her full name but of course, not many of us would be using the real name on social platform nowadays. So we never wrote to each other since then.
Frankly if I had the chance, I would love to meet her again and catch up on things we have missed all these years. Not only with her but maybe with all my pen-friends such as Christopher Freeman from Oklahoma (US), Abhishek Bhattacharjee and Pavan Goud; both from Meghalaya and Hyderabad (India), Orhan from Derinkuyu (Turkey) or Talha Arshad from Lahore (Pakistan).
They might be married or have children or whatnot but I am sure it will be nice to hear from them again. In fact, I think my generation was lucky to have experienced the joy of putting pen to paper only to learn about different existed culture and languages. Letter writing, once very popular might be a hobby of a few now. But there were happy times indeed; with no fear of meeting shady people which is unlike today.
We exchanged fancy letters telling all sort of things such as dreams in life. It was beyond amazing to think that a part of my teen life was chronicled in letters; just like the story of Mary and Max if I must say. The exhilaration was pure to us especially when we attached letters with photo, postcard, sticker and stuffs. You know, all the itsy bitsy things that could make a girl's day bright. Teehee!
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| 'Some of her posted stuffs. She was in the orange sweater, though' |
Unfortunately we lost contact somewhere in 2002. I could not remember why but I guess she must have changed her home address so my letters did not make to her hands safely. I did try to find her on Facebook using her full name but of course, not many of us would be using the real name on social platform nowadays. So we never wrote to each other since then.
Frankly if I had the chance, I would love to meet her again and catch up on things we have missed all these years. Not only with her but maybe with all my pen-friends such as Christopher Freeman from Oklahoma (US), Abhishek Bhattacharjee and Pavan Goud; both from Meghalaya and Hyderabad (India), Orhan from Derinkuyu (Turkey) or Talha Arshad from Lahore (Pakistan).
They might be married or have children or whatnot but I am sure it will be nice to hear from them again. In fact, I think my generation was lucky to have experienced the joy of putting pen to paper only to learn about different existed culture and languages. Letter writing, once very popular might be a hobby of a few now. But there were happy times indeed; with no fear of meeting shady people which is unlike today.
The joy of pure friendship from the good old days, people!
