Keeping in contact with friends and family back home whilst on your travels have become massively easier thanks to making phone calls from your computer.
Whereas it’s Skype, Facebook Video Chat or many others, you can even have video phone conversations for free on computer. But before I go into this post, I urge you tremendously to watch this video. It’s a spoof of the Song ‘Call Me Maybe’ over webcam. It’s without a doubt the most hilarious video I’ve seen and never fails to make me smile!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAQhG59zqZc
Told ya! Bet you are grinning like a Cheshire Cat that’s got the cream!
So where was I? Oh yes! Keeping in contact whilst on the road.
As I said, the main mode of contact for me was making phone calls on the computer or rather the iPad I used whilst travelling around. Or if I couldn’t get internet on it (thanks to blasted extortionate fees in Australia and New Zealand), I would log on for half an hour on the hostel computer, plug in my headphones and then proceeded to get bashed by my mum about an activity that I did on my travels whether it was bungee jumping over the Nevis Gorge or Skydiving in Taupo or perhaps even eating a raw blood-dripping snake’s heart or anything else.
But I didn’t mind, it was like my mum had travelled with me. Here I am, able to share the wonders of travels with my family and have them be in intricate knowledge of my wanders even if they found out, in extreme amusement, about my nude gardening and spread the news to the rest of the family (THANKS DAD!).
So I do have to thank Skype for being an ace program to allow me to call home for free and keep them abreast that I’m still alive. If it wasn’t for them, I would probably be ringing them from an expensive payphone or have them exceedingly painstakingly wait for snail mail, which I did with my postcards. I was pretty amazed how my parents even adapted to it. These techno-phobic people had me worried. Big-time! I cursed myself as I left it until the day before my travelling to teach them how to use Skype and I kind of predicted technological fails within the first weeks I was to be in Thailand. But no, they even rang me up through my iPad before I could even get a chance to ring them! So making phone calls from your computer surely is so so so easy to sort out!
So what ways can you contact me to Call Me Maybe?
1) Skype – it’s free, comes with webcam and microphone and you can abuse me as long as you wish.
2) Facebook Chat – Despite my many protestations to stop going on facebook too much, you are sure to find me on that 90% of the time you log on!
3) Twitter – send me a tweet, maybe photos or perhaps even a website you want me to recommend?
4) Snail Mail – highly unlikely but if I’m going to stay in a place longer than a a couple of weeks, send me an old-fashioned letter. There’s nothing as thrilling as getting mail. Who can it be? I’m popular!
5) E-mail – I did get quite a few emails on my travels, it was very endearing and I just absolutely loved the rolling paragraphs that show that someone took the effort to contact me.
6) Whatsapp – this amazing technological app over smartphones allows you to keep in contact in the form of SMS all around the world and it’s free!
7) Or if you’re feeling flush, give me a phone call.
Even when you are on the road, you meet endless amounts of people. Leaving them your contact details, they can find ways to find you wherever you are. Whether it is the same things I always say ‘whatsapp me!’ or ‘Facebook me!’ However, I didn’t utter Carly Rae Jepsen’s immortal words when I was on my travels. I hoped to see Katherine Jenkins, or Kylie Minogue or perhaps even Amy Pond, to give them my dazzling smile, hand over my card and with a sly wink, say,
‘Call Me Maybe!’
call me maybe!
