|
NOW that
I’ve gotten most of my friends and family into Facebook,
the social-networking site, I’m now egging them on to
try Skype. In this age when our careers make us too busy
and harassed to really connect with one another, Skype
and other applications that allow us to actually see the
people we are speaking with, across millions of miles,
separated by several continents and time zones, help
bridge that divide. Yup, “reach out and touch someone,”
as the old Bell Telephone ads used to proclaim. (By the
way, did you know that it was philosopher and
communication theorist Marshall McLuhan who is credited
for creating that unforgettable line?)
While
Skype has been around for a few years, I never got to
actually try it until last month when I finally got my
new MacBook. (hello, lover.) My old iBook, the previous
generation of portable computers by Apple, had no
built-in web camera. I never got around to buying a web
cam so I was pretty much limited to communicating with
my relatives and friends here and abroad via e-mail and
Yahoo! Messenger (YM). Which isn’t too bad, actually,
considering the time zone difference—I type out my
e-mail in the evening before flopping on my bed, which
is more or less the same time that they wake up in the
morning. When I wake up the next day, I can then read
their e-mails. YM is a little more tricky considering
that you have to schedule your conversations so that you
can chat in real time. Of course, around these parts
texting via cell phone is pretty much the de rigeur
communication tool.
 But
even if you do get to use instant messaging or even
texting, it just isn’t the same as talking to people
face to face. You miss all the nuances of the facial
expressions and the various inflections in the voice,
which can tell you whether the one you’re speaking with
is sincere or not. As an essentially warm and
touchy-feely person (although some may object to that
self-description), I do miss the up-close and personal
connection, especially with my friends and family who
have moved on to their new lives abroad.
So when
I finally got my new MacBook, I thought it was time to
subscribe to Skype and give the application and iSight a
spin. Signing up for the service is pretty
straightforward and easy. You get a user name, you can
already start searching among your list of e-mail
contacts who use the service. And, yes, the service is
free if you are calling someone who is also a Skype
subscriber.
You can
call your friends on their landlines or cell phones, as
well, at very low calling rates. Like if you’re in
Manila and you’re calling someone in the US, you pay
about $0.024 a minute. If you’re calling someone in
Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, it’s a tad higher at $0.213. All
value-added tax inclusive. All you have to do is buy
credit online using your credit card or PayPal.
One of
the first persons I Skyped was Miggy, another Mac user
who finally has found a good use for her iSight. It was
such a thrill talking to each other face-to-face for the
first time, and even though we do have landlines, text
each other constantly via our cell phones and also chat
via YM or Facebook, Skype is our preferred application
for keeping in touch. You just cannot beat the power of
a face-to-face conversation, even if you don’t share the
same physical space. Our discussions just become more
intense or meaningful—seeing a left eyebrow raised, or
hearing each other cackle over a funny story, or
listening to our voices pitch even higher when we are in
a foul mood over the latest entry in the Guinness Book
of the world’s stupidest people.
My
latest Skype recruit is Let, who has been living in New
York for close to a decade. She is still trying to
circumnavigate the Facebook experience and is still gets
lured into the ads that say, “Check out who has a crush
on you.” So she was still a little hesitant to subscribe
to Skype despite my assurances that the calls are free.
But when
she finally hooked up with me through her Mac (Damn!
Steve Jobs should be paying me for all this free
publicity!), we couldn’t stop speaking for three hours!
Yep, I timed it. Her American husband also joined in,
calling out the offensive Tagalog terms he knew just to
practice, while Let and I conversed.
The joy
in seeing each other after three years, when she last
came over for a visit, was utterly priceless. We
couldn’t stop laughing over the latest chismis
about this person and that with whom she used to work
with when she was still based in Manila; she even shared
tips on how to paint my bathroom. There she was in her
New York bedroom, all clean and fresh, ready to go to
bed in her sleepwear, while I had just woken up, still
blear-eyed, also in my ratty pantulog. Still, it
felt like another day at the Red Ribbon outlet near her
Quezon City house, where we used to take our merienda
and rant about certain losers in our lives.
In the
States, I’m told that many companies use Skype to call
their suppliers in China. Let says one of her
advertisers told her that all he has to do is call his
subcontractor in China via Skype and hold up a sample of
the T-shirt he wants made in front of his computer’s web
cam. In China, halfway around the world, his man has a
translator on hand to give instructions to the head
designer. “He says doing business in China is now easier
with this Skype thing,” Let quotes her friend.
The only
drawback to using Skype, I suppose, is that since I
basically work from my home office, I don’t have my
outdoor face on. My friends know that I can never leave
the house without first putting on some lipstick and
eyeliner—the barest minimum for me. Stripped of makeup
and having just awakened, I look like someone who has
risen from the grave.
I became
very conscious about my “web cam look” shortly after
another friend Skype-d me from her office. Of course,
with her power suit on and her made-up face, she looked
divine. In my tattered “thinking” T-shirt and shorts
(read: pambahay), bare-faced except for a
moisturizer and an SPF 45 sunblock, I probably made my
friend think she was at the Sunday matinee of The Rocky
Horror Picture Show.
After
that Halloween preview, I resolved that upon waking up
in the morning and scrubbing my face clean of the
night’s furies, I’d put some pressed powder, eyeliner, a
little rouge and, of course, some lipstick before facing
my computer. Vanity, thy name is woman...but of course!
So go
ahead, Skype me. But not before I put my face on. |
