today i setup skype for my uncle. it was such a weird and awesome experience. Twenty plus years ago, he migrated from Portugal to the US and settled in California. He hasn’t been back home in a decade. Sadly, he was recently diagnosed with cancer, and he will not be flying again. One of his desires, i would imagine, would be to visit the the family he still has back in Portugal.
A week ago, he invited me over to help fix stuff around his house. Life kept me away, but today I managed to make it over there. I helped him with his internet connection and got him online again. While helping him figure out why stuff wasn’t working, I told him about Skype. Turns out that he has one relative that had an account. I installed Skype and that contact was online.
Using google translate, I told his relative who I was (apparently even using google translate, i am a faster typer). Everyone on both sides thought that that it was pretty incredible that I was able to do this. In any case, within a few seconds we had video chat going.
Although I barely speak Portuguese, I fully understood how this technology stuff has fundamentally made an impact on my uncle’s life. I was super proud of all of us technologists making hard stuff consumerized.
2 Comments
Internet & Skype are just amazing shortening the world; so what you did with your uncle was just ‘placing’ him in his native land in a couple of minutes at no charge. And I can imagine how good it was for him as well for you being able to ‘cut’ what, we the portuguese, call as ‘saudade’ (there is no real translation for this, it’s just a kind of mood) but you can ask him about this word. I’m reading and writing this at a small beach south of Lisbon, Portugal, http://tinyurl.com/nmkdb5 almost facing North America on the other side of the Atlantic, so the world is not big enough nowadays. All the best for your uncle and for you and keep posting. Greetings from Portugal.
Luis,
Your’e right, the world is getting smaller every day. I only wish flights were cheaper and I would probably be on that same beach!
Doug