Where Art Thou?

Of late I've been quite the busy bee with a new mission that I've put myself to. Eversince finding out that d's husband is ill, I've been trying hard to locate as many friends / acquaintances who presently know or knew them from the past.

It was very easy in cases where I was still in contact with friends from the past. I had their handphones and we were also in frequent correspondence via emails. It was a lot harder with those whom I've lost touch with over the years...this could go as far as 2-3 years to 11 or 15 years.

A lot of phoning was involved, trying to locate this person and that person through a friend's friend or through somebody's new wife or simply calling up the last known workplace and enquiring if he/she is still there. In most instances I've been quite lucky but sometimes I'm not so lucky and come to a dead end.

This is where googling comes to the rescue. Hours spent surfin the Net has brought many successful leads. This was especially true if the person is attached to a university. I was able to locate the exact department and name too. I must confess...much to my dismay full names of past friends / acquaintances have been lost in memory due to my multiparous activities over the last decade! Hahaa!

Using the new found leads, I managed to get in touch directly with quite a few people. While with others I wrote emails...often long ones too...as I've had to explain who I was, giving some background information of myself lest they forget. This in itself would take a paragraph or two.

To date I'm still waiting for replies from 2 important people who were very close to us back in the early 90s when we first arrived in Edinburgh as undergraduates. These 2 postgraduates who were doing their PhD's were there with their families, and they often invited us to their homes over the weekends. They not only nourished us with their home-cooked meals but our well-beings too with their weekly usrahs which we attended.

On the topic of googling, I also managed to discover an old friend who I presume is currently in the UK with his wife. I came across in the Net one of those pre-raya pics that Malaysians overseas would usually send to our local dailies. The info that accompanied the pic said Dr J was attached to Nuneaton Hospital Coventry while his wife Dr N was with Limerick County Hospital Ireland. You can imagine how surprised I was with this latest bit of info. D was also surprised as his hospital is quite close to where she is and told me that she would see if she could get in touch with him...this after 11 years of no communication.

The world has indeed become smaller with the aid of modern technology and how wonderful it is to be able to renew personal acquaintances and get in touch with long lost friends. And I look forward to hearing from all of them if not some.