Phoning Home

Just made a call back to NZ to a friend. Times have changed, in that it doesn’t cost the earth to call NZ from Germany anymore, but that reliable crackling and delay is still there. The worst is when there’s feedback and you can hear your own voice in your ear. Painful!
There is also the time difference to grapple with, although it’s 12 hours at the moment so not too hard for my numerically-challenged brain to handle. Sometimes people call us at 2am, forgetting there’s even such a thing as a time difference.
I can’t imagine living overseas before the internet, when letters would take months to travel back and forth, often via unnecessary places such as Uganda before they made it. Before the aeroplane is also unthinkable – when people would travel by ship, like their mail. Although my boyfriend’s parents met on a ship heading overseas, so maybe it wasn’t all bad...