Reaching Out

Mr Brown's fairly recent article about Instant Messenging got me thinking. Sure, as a veteran of IM to pass away dreary hours in the office, it's great fun. However, it's taken on a whole new edge here, 8000 miles away from home. It's no longer a luxury.

It's a need.

As romantic as the notion of leaving home and pursuing your dreams is, there is very little romantic about homesickness. It hits you hard. It hits everyone who leaves home. It's that lurking feeling in your gut, that little parasite in your brain that asks "What the hell are you doing here?". It's a natural thing. I am just thankful that I was not brought up macho-shit, and have no qualms about expressing my feelings - I think that a different upbringing, one less well-adjusted, would have broken me.

Still, one MUST find ways of coping with homesickness. I've mentioned an aspect of this in my previous blog entry - keeping busy. I say with some authority that this is mere denial. Sooner or later, you feel a need to renew a connection with home.

That is where IM comes in. Today, I had my first Skype conversations. The previous days where I had my computer hooked up to the Internet had been first marred by the inability to get my sound card working, then by a fried chipboard. In days before this I had to rely on my trust phone and Singtel roaming connection to keep in contact, then by silent webcam.

I can't quite describe the feeling of seeing your family lined up in front of the webcam. It's exilarating. It's a small window to their lives, a faint connection to home that, despite distance, refuses to die. More important, that lurking shadow of guilt over roaming charges just vanishes. One is more willing to speak freely when one does not feel like he has to compress everything in as short a time as possible. IM, for me, in the form of MSN and Skype, made this possible for me.

We talked a lot, my wife and I. She expressed her fears on her scholarship. I tried to reassure her as best I could. She brought Junior in front of the webcam. Junior looked slightly perturbed, but was a real trooper.

I promised my wife and my technophopic mother to wake up early in the mornings to speak to them. I am only too pleased to comply. Leisure and family, for me at least, has merged into a happy muddle.

For a while every morning, at least, I can quell those nasty voices in my head.