My Thoughts On Electronic Mail
I have fifteen e-mail accounts with two-thirds of that number I am actively using, checking at least once a day. Since the days of rocketmail and extremely long Hotmail accounts ("Sorry, that name is already taken. Please try another one.") I have fancied collecting accounts more than a change in look and feel than convenience. MailCity, Eudoramail, Budweiser, Yahoo!, Philwebinc, Gmail, Hotmail and a host of other corporate accounts reserved for me when I was employed by such companies.
Then I was so excited to send and receive e-mails that I always leave my e-mail address on public bulletin boards, chatrooms and willingly send a three sentence e-mail to someone in California or Boston, and expect a reply overnight. Oh, what a fantastic experience to communicate on the other half of the world as I speak. It was so personal that I had to give up my snail mail habit in favor of this time-saving effort.
I gathered friends, met some of them in person and broadened my social network. But in its bad side, it made me more reliable to it that personal touch seemed to be missing. When I communicated with colleagues, I used e-mail instead of phone call or be more verbose about it. In retrospect, it made it easier for me to communicate. I used to imagine that with the advent of e-mail, post offices will only be handling more on bulk carriages and postcard makers will venture online with their softcopy virtual greeting cards.
With the emergence of spam, e-mail brought havoc to my inbox. I no longer have the excitement when I receieve a message from a virtual stranger when I read that the subject is about a drug I did not request nor about a low interest mortgage plan that's not even available in my locality. I have to pay extra money when I maintain my Outlook Express account just to ensure that e-mails that reach me do not contain viruses, worms or Trojan horses.
On the human side of it I still do use e-mail extensively to keep in touch with everyone: friends in Hong Kong, technical support, high school and college friends, relatives.
I send about twenty e-mails a day. In my rough stats I get a reply from six out of twenty within forty eight hours. Some of them are very active responders (I identified two of them, Ruel, an SFC brother in Shenzhen China who seems to be online all the time; and Wirnani, a pretty acquaintance in Davao circa '99) and some of them issue replies within a week or two, depending on heavy loads.
Exceptional cases are when I am having e-mail chats with friends planning for a weekend activity where a thread can easily span hundreds of messages.
Still, there are those who reply very late that I forgot already that I sent them e-mail ages ago. It often renders my purpose useless. And of course, there are those who simply refuse to reply, and prefer to talk about it or simply ignore me.
That is why it is not so difficult to gauge one's personality if the basis of it is on the composition of e-mail, grammar and spelling, the choice of words and the respect the person conveys to you. My former boss, Colin is an example of someone who composes and replies my e-mails with carefulness. He often used to ask me for spellings and internationalization when he does his e-mails and ends up confused and he is totally honest about it.
I have been used to writing a lot of letters to penpals from everywhere and my complimentary close has always been "Sincerely". But in e-mail, often driven by casualness that term is not appropriate anymore no matter how respected person a recipient is. I decided to use "Regards" most of the time. Otherwise I would just be using my name to end the message. "Cheers" is cool. "Ciao" is also well used. "Best" is an abbreviated term for "All the Best" but sounds authoritative to me.
Indeed, e-mail has revolutionized communication. E-mail marketing has emerged as a means to earn and profit online. Newsletters were created to cater to the needs of a practicing individual with certain interests and hobbies. Mobile phones and PDAs now have the capability of composing e-mails. What an exciting age.
But let's not be driven too much about the fuss technology has created. E-mail must be used to enhance communication and not replace the traditional means such as personal conversation, letter writing and telephone talks.
Then I was so excited to send and receive e-mails that I always leave my e-mail address on public bulletin boards, chatrooms and willingly send a three sentence e-mail to someone in California or Boston, and expect a reply overnight. Oh, what a fantastic experience to communicate on the other half of the world as I speak. It was so personal that I had to give up my snail mail habit in favor of this time-saving effort.
I gathered friends, met some of them in person and broadened my social network. But in its bad side, it made me more reliable to it that personal touch seemed to be missing. When I communicated with colleagues, I used e-mail instead of phone call or be more verbose about it. In retrospect, it made it easier for me to communicate. I used to imagine that with the advent of e-mail, post offices will only be handling more on bulk carriages and postcard makers will venture online with their softcopy virtual greeting cards.
With the emergence of spam, e-mail brought havoc to my inbox. I no longer have the excitement when I receieve a message from a virtual stranger when I read that the subject is about a drug I did not request nor about a low interest mortgage plan that's not even available in my locality. I have to pay extra money when I maintain my Outlook Express account just to ensure that e-mails that reach me do not contain viruses, worms or Trojan horses.
On the human side of it I still do use e-mail extensively to keep in touch with everyone: friends in Hong Kong, technical support, high school and college friends, relatives.
I send about twenty e-mails a day. In my rough stats I get a reply from six out of twenty within forty eight hours. Some of them are very active responders (I identified two of them, Ruel, an SFC brother in Shenzhen China who seems to be online all the time; and Wirnani, a pretty acquaintance in Davao circa '99) and some of them issue replies within a week or two, depending on heavy loads.
Exceptional cases are when I am having e-mail chats with friends planning for a weekend activity where a thread can easily span hundreds of messages.
Still, there are those who reply very late that I forgot already that I sent them e-mail ages ago. It often renders my purpose useless. And of course, there are those who simply refuse to reply, and prefer to talk about it or simply ignore me.
That is why it is not so difficult to gauge one's personality if the basis of it is on the composition of e-mail, grammar and spelling, the choice of words and the respect the person conveys to you. My former boss, Colin is an example of someone who composes and replies my e-mails with carefulness. He often used to ask me for spellings and internationalization when he does his e-mails and ends up confused and he is totally honest about it.
I have been used to writing a lot of letters to penpals from everywhere and my complimentary close has always been "Sincerely". But in e-mail, often driven by casualness that term is not appropriate anymore no matter how respected person a recipient is. I decided to use "Regards" most of the time. Otherwise I would just be using my name to end the message. "Cheers" is cool. "Ciao" is also well used. "Best" is an abbreviated term for "All the Best" but sounds authoritative to me.
Indeed, e-mail has revolutionized communication. E-mail marketing has emerged as a means to earn and profit online. Newsletters were created to cater to the needs of a practicing individual with certain interests and hobbies. Mobile phones and PDAs now have the capability of composing e-mails. What an exciting age.
But let's not be driven too much about the fuss technology has created. E-mail must be used to enhance communication and not replace the traditional means such as personal conversation, letter writing and telephone talks.
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11:43 PM
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