First Steps With Skype

Brief summary of this post: Skype is great, technology is great, I'm great, life is great and my new friend in Hokkaido is great!

When I installed Skype a couple of days ago and sent messages to some people at random in the Skype directory asking if I could talk to them. A few hours ago I got a message from someone in Japan who I had contacted. And so it was that I had my first Skype session thanks to a Japanese woman called Yumiko, who lives in Hokkaido, northern Japan.

We talked about life in Japan, travel, cooking, America as a destructive force and many other topics that were of immense interest to me. Yumiko may join Snack Fan Japan sometime in the future and I'm sure she'd make a great addition to the team.

One thing I found very interesting when talking with Yumiko was how having access to the Internet greatly enhanced our conversation. When Yumiko mentioned parts of Japan that I was unfamiliar with I was able to look them up and get a better understanding of what she talking about. Yumiko was looking at this blog and also Snack Fan Japan while we were talking. For some reason my blog didn't make her hang up...

I learnt so much during the 1.5 hours Yumiko and I spent chatting. There's something really wonderful about the sense of freedom you get when you can talk to people across the world for free. Over the next few months I'm going to do more and more to integrate technology into my life and use it to free myself from the forces that restrict how I am able to live.

I hope that all the readers of this blog will try out Skype and use it to make some new friends.