I was talking to a friend about how long I have delayed replying my pen-pal's letter. It was received in January this year and it's now November. By the way, my pen-pal's a policewoman in the Czech Republic. It's a wonder she did not lodge a missing person's report.
So my friend was surprised that there's still people writing LETTERS. *gasp* He said pen-palling is "so quaint". The word "quaint" itself is so quaint. Not many people use it anymore.
I do sometimes wonder how many people still take the time to write letters and get it sent through the post. It's a bit of a hassle compared to e-mailing. And with instant messenger, we can just chat a bit now and then, so what's the point of airmail letters, anyway? But it's never the same. Each pen-pal's letter has his/he scent. E-mail is so sterile. And I don't IM my pen-pals and only send them the occasional e-mail.
So that conversation led me to wonder what happened to the company that I bought pen-pals from. It seems that my friend also used their service. Anyway I Googled "International Youth Service", and oh my, they are still actively serving school children the world over.
Browsing through their website brought back many fond memories. I started pen-pal at the age of 11 after being introduced to IYS by my brother's classmate.
I bought a lot of addresses from them because correspondence between my pen-pals and I kept breaking off after one or two letters. Some never even respond at all. We were too young and don't have much to write. I remember reading letters from a pen-pal whose mother corrected his grammar. And my mom would correct HIS letters, because my mom was afraid I'd pick up bad grammar, not that it's any good now.
And I remember receiving a letter from a boy by the name of Happy from India. I was very happy (indeed) because it was unexpected, but my parents killed the joy by returning the letter to sender with the remark, "No such person."
My parents have this sick thinking that I will marry my pen-pal. They disallow us to write to anybody in Malaysia. That's why I don't have any local pen-pal. And they told us to use false names. But I remember my mom saying that we can change our names to anything at all, but must retain our surname. The surname is very important to the Chinese.
If that is not enough, I told each person a different birth date. I imagined myself getting a birthday present every month, but of course that never happened. School kids don't have spare cash for gifts, let alone a greeting card.
As the pen-palship continued, I felt very guilty, but I had no avenue to rectify that lie. That's why I learned not to lie anymore, because it is always harder that speaking the truth in the first place.
Even then, IYS had this "buy 10 free 1 address" promotion, and I would solicit my friends to buy so that I could get the free address. Subsequently, I never had to buy any, but I did the "dirty work" of buying bank draft and sending the applications to this company in Turku, Finland. Actually, it was my mom who helped me do all these.
And when IYS sent the package of addresses to me, I kept all the forms, stickers, address books, etc. Because I had all the forms, it was always me who helped my friends to buy from IYS. They had no chance until IYS sent each person ONE application form. I was evil.
A few years down the road, I was featured in a BBC programme called "Pop Pal" where the DJ will read out a letter every week. I was so excited to receive a whole bag of letters from BBC the first time, but upon opening, there were so many letters from AFRICA! Bah... I cut out all the stamps and traded with other pen-pals. I still have those letters even now. I need to seriously declutter one of these days.
And then for some time my Filipina pen-pal and I were busy signing and making Friendship Books. I wonder if anyone has seen these before. When I was very busy I just stopped signing, and didn't even send them out. I think I still have one whole envelop of these somewhere.
It was a coincidence that through IYS, I was matched with my German pen-pal while he was also matched with me. That's why we have written to each other for 15 years already.
Now I have less than five pen-pals and we only write sporadically and only on special occasions like birthdays an Christmases. Sigh... those were the days.
