Facebook the new Pen Pals

Facebook the new Pen Pals ©

By Michael Casey

 

I used to have a SW radio and I’d listen to all the foreign stations from all around the world, in English as I’m not multi-lingual, though one of my brothers is, and a very old friend from grammar school too. The quality of the radio reception was truly amazing, I had a 30foot round room antennae made from old electrical wire. I had a schedule and I’d listen religiously to all the programmes, I even got a request on Radio Brazil, and one on radio Switzerland. That was 30years ago and more. I even heard radio Australia. This was before computers and Internet.

People will probably laugh when they hear of SW radio, it was the bees’ knees back then, BBC world service is SW radio still. Reaching out, or listening out was very interesting for me. My first radio was a blue plastic radio with a small square battery in it, the kind of battery you have in your 2  smoke alarms. I listened to BBC Radio4 on an old Bush radio for 20years before I tried writing, so you can understand just how important radio was/is to me. Radio brings another dimension to your life, as children we listen under the bedclothes so dad cannot hear. Or we’d save up for an earphone, which went in one ear only, headphones did not exist back then, 1960s what an era to grow up in. We had a white plastic radio for the living room, my dad heard my brother’s request on Tony Blackburn, long live Tony Blackburn.

Computers and Internet have changed the ball game. We can speak and see folks all over the world, we broadcast to Ma in Shanghai all the time, MSN messenger does the trick, its all so easy. You’d be burnt as a witch if you predicted all this years ago, but technology does bring all of us together, that is truly wonderful.

Now what about Face Book.  It does bring people together, even if Mark Zuckerberg never answers my messages, and has never bought any of my books. Face Book is the modern short wave radio, it brings people together from all over the place, and best of all it’s a 2 way communication. So in my case I contact writers in the vain hope that they’ll think I’m a great humour writer and tell their agents and hey presto I’ll have a 4 book deal and be on Opera telling her about my latest oeuvre, and I promise I won’t jump up and down on the couch, I weight more than a heavyweight boxer.  Another side to FB is the sharing experience, so as I did some Esol   English teaching I can give a few tips, share a few websites with people. LearningEnglishWithMrDuncan on UTUBE is a great resource, 150 short lessons with subtitles. Mr Duncan is now working in Shanghai, this amuses me because my mother-in-law could end up as his landlady. I would still like Mark Z to buy my 4 books and tell the world to do the same, then I could live in Palo Alto, and who knows Mark Zuckerberg could be my landlord.