Stamps and Letter Writing

Finally got the set of stamps I had been waiting for since May.They are really nice, with all the tintin comic book covers with the titles in different languages.

Marc, a colleague of mine picked up a set of these commemorative stamps(100yrs of Herge) on the day of its release in May 2007, and sent it to my office address here but it never arrived , thanks to the Indian Postal Dept. Fortunately another friend of mine was visiting Belgium and Marc sent her the 2nd set he had picked up when he heard the 1st set was lost .

As the long wait was over and I was appreciating the stamps on its arrival today, it took me back to my school days, days of pen pals and letter writing. There was a medium even those days to find new friends across the globe even without high speed internet, email/chat and no social networking sites.

I had a bunch of penpals while growing from places like Greece, Germany,Mauritius,Sweden . We would correspond regularly via post and write about our growing up years, about music, books, places visited and also exchange stamps,currencies, coins and pictures of each other and of our friends and family. I am talking about the good old days where one had to wait for a couple of weeks to get a reply.There was no instant chat /email /sms /blogs /livejournals nor digital pic uploads!! I remember going to the stationary shop and trying to get the perfect letter writing sheets, envelopes, cards for correspondence also trying to find the perfect pen :) to make my writing a little more legible. Also there were times when I had tons to write to my friends and I would borrow those onion skin letter writing sheets from my mum to write on, to reduce the postal costs . Even pictures had to be developed and not uploaded..

I have lost touch with most of my pen pals, suppose we grew up and went our different ways , but was also able to find a few of them back again, thanks of technology and people search on the internet. Nowadays I send them emails :)