Email is a subset of letter in a grammatical sense, but I find that email is for an electronic mail whereas letter denotes traditional paper letter written with pen, pencil or typewriter.

I used to write many letters and notes to friends as a way of communication. I tried to avoid using telephones, and to talk in person or write a letter to them as phone is too impersonal. The best way to talk to person is to sit face to face although it is in most cases not always possible. Then I tried to write to them "letter" so that friend of mine read it over and over, and can retrieve later on to refresh memories on what we have talked.

Telephone is a very handy way to talk to anyone in most places. I would pick up the phone to call a friend who haven't met quite a while if I can locate his phone number, and talk for a while and hang up promising to get together soon. As phone conversation replaces actual meeting, a chance of seeing him in person gets slimmer after each conversations.

Archiving letters helps me to refresh memories from friends. It is written and I can read it over much later on. It reminds me of what we talked about sometime in the past whenever I pick it up from archives of letters.

In this computer age, email replaced pretty much of telephone and letters with friends already. What I hate and worry is email is sent, read and deleted without leaving little trace for later retrieval. It's possible to save and retrieve email, but it's not easy to keep it for the future reference, ie. it's not handy. Unlike letters much of email communications is lost leaving little to refresh with friends.

I know several friends who've archived about 30 MB of emails which he did for a decade. Every email communication is stored somewhere in his computer for the reference. But retrieving is not a simple proces at all. Searching is laborious; even before that, he has to save in a well organized way for an easy retrieval later on.

For letters, I just put in a large letter box. To find David's letter, I need to browses through whole box finding Mark's or James' letters with their handwritings. Seeing even handwriting is refreshing to feel the warmth.

I print email letter occasionally to keep it in file, and the printed letters are mostly on letter size with Courier fonts. It's boring to see printed email and I can't which one is from who until I read the letter.

With the hand-written letters, I can tell whose letter it is from just by looking at handwriting in most cases. Letters with various colors and backgrounds reflect the design of the time it was sent. Even before seeing the content of the letter, it reminds me of many things from the past.

When I email a friend I haven't seen for a while, a single sentence "How are you? I'm fine" is enough to say everything. It will be answered someday if not immediately. Email costs less than telephone and letter, and even handier to send than those. I forgot to mention this: I work in the computer field and with computer most of the time; most of my friends uses computer. And most of the work place has an access to computer technology thesedays. If that's not the case, I don't know what to say.

In many cases, I forgot whose letter I was looking for and read just what I was grabbing at the time. It doesn't matter whose letter I'm reading as those are letters from my friends in the past to keep the contacts. As long as the time is well spent, letters do good.

Email is so convenient; I write much less with my pen and paper to friends these days. I just try to force myself write with pen and paper once a year to friends.

(June 20, 1998)