Know when to fold them

Know when to fold them

Inanity leads to insanity as cards give way to more modern greetings

SOCIAL & LIFESTYLE
Know when to fold them

May I be allowed to wish all my friends the best in health and happiness for 2014. I hope you become wealthier and all your wishes come true. With love, Van.

That message beeped at me as I was driving back from Chanthaburi last Monday. It begged for a response then and there and so, ensuring no cops were around, I slowed down to 130kph and typed my reply on my smartphone, with one eye on the road.

''No, I don't allow you to.''

What a spiteful reply! Whatever came over me, you might ask? Well I'll tell you; nostalgia came over me, that's what, plus a feeling that it's not fair this new generation gets out of the whole Christmas/New Year wish thing so easily.

This is the first Christmas and New Year that I didn't receive a single card in the mail.

It's not just because I'm on my housing village's blacklist after making a facetious comment at the last general meeting about the inability of the Committee to repair the inadequate drainage system.

It's the times, dear reader.

Look at my snail mail over the past week.

Credit card bills. Electricity bill. A reminder that my Vanity Fair subscription is almost up. A brochure telling me my ideal weight is ''on the horizon'' if I join a new weight loss clinic at Megabangna run by a doctor who should have siphoned some of her profits off towards lower jaw reconstruction.

But a New Year or Christmas card?

When did it all stop?

Nong Van is one of my staff. He is 19 years old. I suspect he doesn't even know what a New Year's card looks like, just as he is probably ignorant of other obsolete inventions like fax machines and stick magazines, victims of this cyber generation.

I remember a time, probably when Nong Van was still on all fours, when one had to buy a couple of dozen Christmas and New Year cards early December.

These were the olden days of Thailand. It was a more peaceful time; the people were happy, there were no red and yellow shirts, and politicians were able to divert public funds into their own accounts without the slightest fear of retribution.

When December rolled around you'd make your Christmas and New Year card list, of everybody you had to send a card to; overseas friends and family, local business contacts, work colleagues.

Every mid-December I would set aside a full day to write up my Christmas cards.

It was usually a Sunday, inevitably after a heavy Saturday night that involved lots of pink plastic dishes of Thai food washed down with soda, ice and exotic-sounding mineral turpentine.

You really had to write. It wasn't enough just to write ''Dear Great Aunt Millie, with love, your favourite nephew Andrew''. Oh no. You had to write a few paragraphs about what you'd been doing, your future plans, and your wishes for health and happiness.

And what I wrote for Great Aunt Millie couldn't be reproduced for, say, Great Aunt Sally, just in case they happened to be chatting on the phone and mention they'd received a card from nephew Andrew who's apparently doing great things over in Bangkok, and they start reading what I wrote over the phone. Such is the burden of having to stay in good stead with great aunts of great wealth in the twilight of their lives.

I thus concocted a clever and elaborate network of messages, each around four paragraphs each, that could be reproduced for friends and relatives who would never cross paths.

My Great Aunt Millie in Melbourne would never run across my Cousin Suzie in the southern suburbs of Brisbane. They got the same message. My Christmas cards were not unlike Mozart's Variations On A French Theme; all basically the same with different trills and whistles depending on the recipient.

Once written, I would trudge down to the local post office where I purchased sheets of stamps, stuck them on hand-written addressed envelopes, and shoved them in the post box outside.

There would be a second wave, too. I would start receiving Christmas cards from people not on my original list, and etiquette required you to reply whether or not it was in time for Christmas.

And what of all the cards you received? Most people would string them up and place them in prominent places. The more cards you had attested to your self worth, naturally.

By the turn of the millennium things started to change.

Cards turned into e-cards, remember? That was popular until clever Nigerian and Russian scammers worked out ways to render your computer inoperable via viruses embedded in those attachments.

E-cards gave way to SMS messages, but even they have faded.

This year, it's all about stickers.

Now I don't know about you, but stickers were things I collected when I was a kid.

I remember joining the Suzi Quatro Fan Club and getting an entire row of ROCK ON WITH SUZI stickers I could peel off and cover my school bag with.

A second sheet featured Suzi Quatro posing in her leather jumpsuit and guitar against the names of her hits. You should have seen the envious looks of the kids in my class when I turned up at Sunnybank State School with 48 CRASH and DAYTONA DEMON plastered all over my Hogan's Heroes lunchbox.

Not any more.

Stickers in 2013 don't even technically exist. They belong to an application known as Line, and if you haven't heard of Line, then you are even more of a hoary old fart than any former Suzi Quatro fan.

I have clocked up 113 Line stickers over the past 48 hours. Of those, 93 are either HAPPY NEW YEAR or HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014.

Another nine say LET'S PARTY!, not that any of those nine invited me anywhere, so I assume they want me to party, but not at their place.

Another five have HENG RUAY, which means may you be lucky and rich. That leaves six unique Line sticker messages, such as the one from my friend in Chiang Rai which asks: ARE YOU HAPPY? That one sent me into a funk for a good half an hour.

(Then there was the former friend in Surat Thani who sent me a picture of a gun with two bullets. If my lifeless corpse is discovered any time after the publication of this column please point the police in the direction of that southern town.)

Why Line stickers? Oh dear reader, get a grip; they're free!

You don't have to buy stamps and envelopes and cards.

You don't have to pay a motorcycle taxi driver to take you to the post office. You don't even have to leave the post office guys a bottle of whiskey for New Year.

This is 2014; very cyber, very impersonal, and very efficient.

Nong Van spent no money, and very little time, in constructing that message he sent to me and all the other names in his Line Friend List. Is it progress? I don't know. Is it a bad thing? Well ... maybe not. My knee-jerk reply was not only a hazard to drivers around me; it was also perhaps a little unfair.

You see, Nong Van wishes me only good things, just like I wished my Great Aunt Millie, who incidentally passed away in her sleep more than a decade ago, leaving her vast estate to charity and nothing in this direction, thus rendering Nong Van's intentions far purer than mine ever were. The young generation wins, again.

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