Penpal
Recently bimbobum made a post about friendship books. Hmm, that made me thought about writing about my penpals. I’m sure many of us had penpals in our teenage years, be it domestic or overseas. If you don’t, I don’t even know what to say.
There was this International Pen Friend (IPF) in Dublin and I learn about it from a magazine one day in Form 3. So, signed up and paid a fee for 20 names from all over the world. Can you imagine, I slipped in RM20 cash in the envelope. Then a few weeks later, a letter came and it was a list of names. Yeah, 20 of them. Guys and girls from all over the world. Germany, Argentina, Japan, Russia, England, Switzerland, America, Canada, Indonesia, and Australia. I wrote to a few of them, a german girl, a japanese girl, a swiss girl and an american girl. Here you may notice, they are a girls. Come on, its normal at that time.
But of all these girls, let me tell you, the german… after a few letters she got bored. The jap girl was nice for sending me a lot of cute things especially Tokyo Disneyland stamps. Yeah, stamps. She was nice but her letters were short ( A page of exercise book-sized paper) and it took ages for her to write English. I got bored. The swiss girl sent me xmas card and a few letters before she stopped writing to me for whatever reason. But I notice, Swiss like to write in chequered papers like those you use in your maths exercise book. The american? I was pissed that she dont know where the fuck is Malaysia. She know about Singapore but never heard of Malaysia. I was so pissed I dont want to write to her anymore. Thats it.
Then came 2 new letters. One from Viola and another from Manami. Yep. Viola’s from Austria and Manami, as you’d guess, from Japan. Viola’s first letter was like a novel. 3 sheets of papers or 6 pages of neat small cursives. Wooh. This is nice. And Austrian stamps are wonderful. On the other hand, Manami being a jap, she can write decent english. Well, she’s a nerd. A cute nerd. All her letters revolve around exams and studies. University’s entrance exams, biology, economics etc. But one thing for sure, these 2 new friends have one thing in common.
They can play music instrument. Viola plays saxaphone and Manami is a drum freak. Now, I’ve lost contact with Manami. The last time, I heard from her was in 2003 (i’d guess). And I’m still in touch with Viola thru emails occasionally. She’s a musician now. She has a jazz band and she teaches sax to children in Vienna. My affliation links, Falb Fiction and Phoen are her websites.
All the best, Oli. And where’s the personally autographed CD you promised me?
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