As an immigrant a part of our lives is figuring out the best way to communicate with family members back home and across the globe. I remember the transition from landlines to cell phones and the numerous phone cards that were used to maintain family ties. I also recall each person being convinced that one phone card gave more minutes that the other or it no longer gave as many minutes as it used to.

Eventually everyone got smartish phones and we moved from Skype to Viber and firmly settled on Whatsup as a community. It has become almost synonymous with phone to most of the immigrants I know. So that is my primary and favourite method of online communication.

I love and have always FaceTime but the problem was that everyone didn’t have an iPhone so it didn’t have the impact that Whatsup had so it has failed to be my primary method of communication.

I also adore email. You never know what you are going to get. It varies from scams, legitimate money transfers, updates from your bank, hospital or the government. Back in the day we didn’t have cloud storage so we sent emails of photos to be shared amongst family members through email. I also use email not just to communicate with others but with myself. During my undergrad I often sent myself drafts of my work, reminders of things to do, copies of PDF books and resumes. I was brought up when letter writing was still a thing and I think email still gives me that little jolt of receiving or posting a letter.

Finally I shouldn’t forget these little blog posts that I also use to communicate online with all of you.