Online Chat

Online chat is a trending activity done by many people nowadays. Some chat through chat site, others through facebook, yahoo messenger, or even the blackberry chat. Chat is a lot of fun right? If we think further why people chat online, there must be a lot of reasons. They might have no friends (at all? wow!!), they want to kill their time, or they want to experience new way of  making friends.

I learned how to do online chat in 1997 or 1998. My sister taught me. And years ago internet conncetion is so rare, i had to go to the local post office. becaus eit's the only internet cafe available in my hometown. I paid 6000 rupiah per hour for a snail connection and many times i had to queue. I logged in to MIRC, that was the most popular chat site. My motivation to chat is to practcie my English with foreigners. And yes, i've got many overseas online friends. I even sent letters to them, i made friend with a lady from Canada, a Chinese guy, and a Tunisia man. I don't remember others.

Online chatting helps me a lot. I gain more vocabulary and i learn many new slang and uses which i didn't get at school. i also learn about custom of people. Most of my friends are American, Indian, Turkish, Canadian, Middle Eastern, and French. But unlike the real world friendship, the chat friendship usually is not long lasting. There are things to be considered when you want to try the online chatting:

1. Never believe in your new online friends just by chatting with them few times.
2. Be carefull,. many people in online chat hide their real personality, you can look at their eyes so it's hard for you to know whether they say the truth or not.
3. Never give your personal e-mail address to your chat friends (i have another e-mail address, not the main one for chat friends only, so whenever they spam me, i will have no problem to deactivate my optional e-mail)
4. Be careful of scammers. Scammer is someone who swindles you by means of deception or fraud, So he/she will try to get money from you. There are many ways that they can do, but of course they usually start with a good friendship even romance relationship.
5. Be careful. Many people in the chat site are adult so they might ask you to chat about sex and other adult content. You can just block or avoid this kind of  people.
6. Always look at your real life. Online friends are cool but you have to ensure yourself that they might be unreal. Your friends at school, your neighborhood friends are real so keep up your good relationship with them.
7. If you want to learn English, don't be hesitate to try online chat. Most of the people i met in online chat use English as their second language, others use English as their foreign language just like us, Indonesians. So, don't worry with your English. Happy chatting.

(Silvana)