I thought it was a crazy idea of a crazy man. But after surfing the site for a while, insanity got induced into me perhaps, as I decided to be the 7008th wacky in the network. After some time I found myself with the addresses of five wired fellows mailed to me by the site. Now it was for me to leave the comforts of the virtual world and perform the analogue part, mailing introductory postcards to "the first five".And there I was at the nearby post office enquiring how to send a postcard to an overseas destination. The elderly postman engrossed in assortment of the collected mails gave up task at hand to have a look at the enquirer.
"Where are you sending them to?"
"Brazil, Portugal, Finland and...," I tried to recall the location of the rest two.
"We do not have official international postcards. But you can go for some picture postcards. You'll get them in a stationary shop. You will have to stick stamps of Rupees eight each," he resumed his "Mission Assortment" again.
I took out forty bucks. "Give me ten four- rupee stamps."
While counting the stamps from the bunch he looked up at me again. "Don't you use e-mail? I have never used them but I have heard you can type letter on the computer and send them through internet. My son who is in college, communicates with a lot of people abroad that way every day. He says he gets reply in not more than a minute or so. You can take help of any one of the cyber cafe owners on that line," he handed me over the stamps.
" Thanks!"
That day, on my way back to office, I dropped in at a stationary shop looking for picture post cards. The owner took the pain to clean the bundle of postcards dumped at one corner of the store.
"I have not sold a single one of them in the past two years."
The first thing I did in the morning yesterday was to drop the cards at the postbox near the office. One of my colleagues saw them and was astonished! "Does any body use them now- a-days also?"
"Crazy ones like me!"
Statistics posted on the site says, "The slowest postcard so far took 114 days to arrive while the average postcard trip time is 13 days."
So it's now time for me to wait and see. However I feel it is not only the idea that is crazy but also each one of us who are in the network.
Comments
It was really a joy when someone replied especially on a picture postcard. I also participated in some of those stupid letter chains which promised that you'll get thousands of picture postcards in return - yet to get a single one.
It's perhaps my turn now...
rita
I just wonder, will the e-revolution be able make snail-mailing a "museum thing"?
Thanks for dropping in my blog...I too was worried about secuity...but considerig the amount of randomness, I decided to give it a chance...let's see...so far I have not seen any result, but optimistic...