You write long-distance and then wait days for reply

With the advent of Internet and wireless communication, you can write an electronic mail (email) and get a response almost immediately. With so many on-line chat applications on mobile phones, you can talk and see the person across many miles away. You will not feel lonely when you are working in a foreign land. It is just a phone call away on VoIP (Voice over Internet protocol).

This was not the case in the 1980s. There was no Internet, no World Wide Web (www). When I was away on overseas assignment or overseas training, I had to write letters and send them via airmail. The cheaper form of airmail was the Aerogramme. It was lightweight to save on postage cost.

Most personal letters were hand-written and not typed. Penmanship was taught in schools back in the early days. It was a joy to see good penmanship or handwriting. Any errors on a letter would be crossed out and the letter could be full of corrections, unless you want to write all over again.

When you sent a letter back then, it would take days before it arrived at the recipient’s address. To get a reply would take even longer when the other party was busy to craft a reply. So you waited for the postman to deliver the letter, or it might not arrive because it was missing enroute to you.