skype

My aunt called from Singapore. Through Skype. I had installed it in April after loads of people kept bugging me to download it. But so far, the only way I'd used it was for the STAR Greater China group chat (jeez, we should have started that years ago. It made things much easier to be able to ask a question to all Germans at STAR Beijing and STAR Shanghai at once and then get answers from different sides instead of having to bother Alex on the phone. And it would be great to use that between the European and overseas offices, too. Or with the software support).

Chatting was ok, basically the same as using MSN. But every time anyone suggested to use Skype for internet phone, I'd start panicking and find ways why it didn't seem to make sense to me: "the phone bill is paid by the company anyway."; "I have no microphone."; "I have no headset"... Today, my aunt asked if I had Skype while we were chatting on MSN and then immediately called me. I refused her first. But she called again. And I picked up, and it worked :-)))) Sound quality was even better than with phone calls once in a while. And it felt nice to be able to talk to her without having to worry about the phone bill (have I mentioned that I LOVE my DSL flatrate? ;-)).

10 minutes later, the phone rang again. My cousin from Singapore ;-) my aunt had told her about our successful talk and she wanted to try it out, too :-). Now I should get Reiner to install it (he had actually been the first one to tell me about it some time last year but lost interest when he didn't know anyone who used it).