Keypals: 21st Century Penpals

I'm not sure if you know this about me but I love having penpals – I've had them since I was a kid. When I was around 5 or 6 I'd send scribbles and really sweet notes to the cow mascot of Anchor Milk. I thought he was real. I remember having this yooooooooge crush on him and my father encouraged me to keep the friendship by telling me the importance of writing regularly. In return, Mr. Mascot (or so I thought it was him) would send me Anchor-themed stickers and coloring books. I remember waking up one morning to see the entire yard covered in snow (of course it was just yucky, unromantic lahar from the Pinatubo eruption) and felt terrible when I wasn't allowed to make a snowperson. I remember the one bright spot that day was the fact I received a set of crayons and a letter from Mr. Mascot.

Later on, I used to exchange letters with my Ninang from Manila. She'd send clothes and toys and the most beautiful hand-drawn cards. When my family finally moved to Manila, my childhood friends and classmates would send monthly letters, complete with pictures of all the things I've missed in my home town. In high school, my host sister from Japan would send the cutest cards. But times change with the technology. Wikipedia notes that a modern variation on the traditional penpal arrangement is to have a keypal and exchange email addresses as well as or instead of paper letters. In college, I moved on to e-mail and would trade life stories (I still do!) with a South African politician whom I met at an international conference back when I was an intern. Five years later, we still share funny anecdotes about his work, his cute four year-old son , my gripes about school and random dating advice. An hour ago, an American friend whom I met at a study abroad program sent me an email update about his experiences in Trinidad where he's doing his thesis on Caribbean revolutionaries. Along with a letter is a link to Dropbox where he had a bunch of music files for me to listen to: Burial, James Blake, Katy B. – experimental music not yet available in the Philippines!

If I have one gripe about emails is that it's impossible to trade coupons, swap slips, postcards, stamps and anything else light and flat enough to fit inside an envelope, often called "tuck-ins". But ever since I signed up for Dropbox (30 minutes ago!), a Web-based file hosting service that uses cloud computing to enable users to store and share files and folders with others across the Internet using file synchronization, messages from keypals are no longer as ephemeral as before – now I get to share and receive ebooks, pictures, pictures, and basically any computer file I have on my (or my friend's) system.

Unfortunately, if your Internet connection is slow synchronization takes fooooreeeever. And so I decided to write this blog post while waiting.