ESL Blogs

Forgive me if this blog seems too long. (Well I know it is a bit long, I can't help it).

In the loving memory of Kiwi_John, the late ESL Admin. To all previous ESL Admins; Cobra, Teabag and Chuck and to all my former chatter friends in ESL Room (now known as 1997 Chat Room); Snjura, Shrek, Tito, Shu_Man, Maria_fer, Bajo, Tiffita, Lolly, Aurora, Little Ngoh, Tristan, Maru and the rest (forgive me for I am unable to remember all your nicks).

People always asked me how do I came to know about this site and for how long have I joined the EC Chat Room. (Another thing that people always asked was the meaning of my nick. I am not going to write about that in here, because it will take another blog to explain. LOL). I did not purposely joined this site in order to learn English though only God knows my English especially my grammar needs a lot of scrubbing and polishing. In fact, I do not even know such free site existed. (Forgive me if I sound so uninformed and ignorant, but I am). I do not chat. I only surfed the net to read English articles and news. (which by the way a good way of learning English too).

However, it was all changed in 2006. I went to the South Korea for three months as part an Employee Exchange Programme between my Company and a Korean company. There was nothing much I can do during the programme besides observing their work practices. Communication with my Korean colleagues were a bit hard because most of them can only speak a little bit of English, though they tried very hard to help me and unfortunately, I know next to nothing any Korean words (again, I was being ignorant).

One thing about Korean people (maybe this only happened in the office that I was attached), you need to make an appointment to talk about work with them. This maybe due to the fact that they were very busy. And just to let you know, they do not chat aimlessly too. So by the second week in that Company, I was bored witless. I had endless schedules of appointments and nothing much to do in between. 

So, I decided to find an English chat room, just to kill the time in between appointments. In other words, I stumbled into EC (at that time I believed it was called ESL Chat Room). I was pleasantly surprised. To tell you the truth, I do not know what to expect.

I met some interesting chatters. Sometimes I thought I was chatting to different chatters, but in fact I was chatting to the same chatter just with different nick. We chatted about everything and nothing. We embellished. We squabbled. We fight with each other especially when issues about religion came into the picture. Can you try to imagine, a bunch of chatters with just a little bit of English comprehension were trying to up-hold their views and beliefs? Misunderstandings; a lot of them, bound to happen. As usual, the Admins will try to keep peace in the room, but a lot of us just too big headed sometimes to adhere. 

However, between embellishing,  squabbling and joking, I realised that we forged a friendship, albeit a virtual friendship. I will looked forward to meet my friends in the chat room and shares stories or just being foolish. Suddenly my three months stay in Korea meant my three months stay with ESL. 

When I went back to Malaysia, work took over. Suddenly, unintentionally, I left ESL. Sometimes I do wonder about my friends but left it at that. I left ESL (for the first time) for about six months, though I am not too sure exactly.

Then, I was not too sure why, the urge for me to log in to ESL was too strong. Thus, I re-logged in to ESL. The warmth and friendship were still there. They greeted me like a prodigal daughter coming back to the home. Though some of them kept on using different nicks, I do not feel like a stranger at all. I felt I was at home.

We still squabble. We still up-holding our views. And we still misunderstood each other. Nothing changed yet everything changes. Ad mist all of these, I met two of my virtual friends face to face. One was from the same city and another one was from Vietnam. It was strange yet exciting to finally able to chat face to face.

A few of them became good virtual friends. We gossips. We shared work headache. We shared tears over some silly matters. And sometimes I became an Aunt Agony to some of the younger chatters.

Then, we received a shocking news. Our Admin, Kiwi_John died. ESL went quiet for a few days, then weeks, then months. We still squabble, mind you. But the room seemed strange. We fight more often. Little things became bigger. We became less tolerable towards each other. Suddenly, I found myself came in less and less into the chat room. I drifted apart. Maybe, the same goal that made everyone came into ESL which was to learn English made us drifted from each other too. Maybe, some of us realised that besides learning English, we had nothing much in common. Our world was too world apart. We had drained our topics of discussions.

Unconsciously and unintentionally, I left ESL. I tried to maintain the friendship through other messengers and Skype, but it was hard. A void was left in my heart. I missed my friends, but different time zones and commitments made it harder to keep in touch.

Time flies. I never realised that it was already four years since I left ESL. Suddenly, out of the blue, some old chatter from ESL made the effort to re-connect with everyone and made an ESL group in a Facebook. We met again, but it was totally different. We left messages in each others' walls but it was not the same. The instant and spontaneous come back was not there.  

Chuck, the former ESL Admin, left a message and asked me to re-join. I just ignored the message. Four years seems too long to enter and re-connect. I did not know what made me decided to re-connect with EC again. Maybe it was fate. 

EC was different. It changed. I changed. I became a stranger once again. But I guess what attracted people to EC still there. The warmth, the spontaneity, the jokes, the sharing are still exist. It still feels like a cosy home. Ahhh.. well..  the fights and the misunderstandings are part and parcel of EC. It was like a sore thumb. But I came to learn to ignore that small little part.

I befriended some of EC chatters and sometimes feels like a Granny in a school full of kids. I may wrote this blog in the memory of my previous friendship with the old chatters, but for all my new EC friends, thank you for your warmth and friendship. Let us see where this journey ends.