Dear Log,
A friend of mine from the good old days of EFNet is from the normally peaceful and prosperous country of Ivory Coast -- and so when I saw in the paper the other day that there was nasty fighting over there, I was a bit worried. A bit of digging and I found his new email address (the benefits of him having a hapax legomenon name), and checked in with him. It turns out that he and his family relocated to Thailand after the first sign of trouble in Ivory Coast two or three years ago, so all is well (except for, you know, all those millions of helpless people still in Ivory Coast).
So, long story short, I'm quite relieved. Not only are he and his family safe, but they're eating Thai food every day! Wowza!
This sort of episode seems all quite mundane to me until I go to mention to my mom ("So, what's new today?") that I know a guy who I thought was in Ivory Coast, and... then I think: I am definitely the only person in my family who starts sentences with "there's this guy I know in Ivory Coast...", or "the stores in France are horribly over-charging for my book", or "me and a half-Viet geneticist guy I know in the Ukraine were emailing back and forth about how crazy things are there -- but at least they get a deal on genome database access...".
I mean, not that my family are exactly yokels from Nowheresville -- they're from LA, and their immediate neighbors include an Indonesian physicist and some sort of Iranian mogul (he's "in shipping"), and from their driveway you can see signs in at least four different unrelated languages. But still, it's one thing to know people from all over -- that's taken for granted in L.A.. It's another thing to know people who are all over.
Whats more I email and read email from people all over the world more often than I speak to my friends down the road a 30 minute drive away.
I often find myself telling my wife how I am talking to somebody in france or germany about a piece of autodia or something that I am working on.It just seems normal to be talking with people all over the world all the time. Being subscribed to some of the mailing lists like (void) means I can know when friends in Australia have a new job or somebody is sweden moves into a new flat within hours.
TorgoX, it's like you're talking about me! Like, I know this one guy -- he's from REVERE, MA! And I know this other guy -- he's lives WAY out in Carver, MA. Heck, I know people go to CAPE COD for just a WEEKEND. Wild! And I don't want to brag, but I have close friends that live in distant NEW HAMPSHIRE. My own family is from the Old Country (Worcester, MA) and boy, do we get ribbed about our CRAZY ACCENTS! Don't be jealous: I live in METROPOLITAN BOSTON where I meet NEW and EXOTIC people EVERYDAY.
I probably have more friends in New York than I have within 20 miles of where I live. And I chat with most of them daily (hourly?), whereas my "local" friends only see me once every few weeks.
