It all started probably when I was in class 9. There was a website called Orange Pie where in myself and my friend enrolled. It was the first of the social networking sites I was into. Of course, needless to say that with Orkut and Facebook, Orange Pie died, but it was definitely one of the pioneers. We got pen pals on Orange pie and one girl, Veena from Baltimore was so sweet that she wrote out to me. None of us owned mobile phones those days, but email communication was very much in use. But despite this, she opted for the conventional form of communication and that really moved me. She had sent a pic attached to the neatly typed inland letter. We used to chat over Orangepie, almost everyday, sharing experiences from each others life. We don’t talk on an everyday basis these days,but we are still in touch on facebook. She was even kind enough to invite me to her wedding.
What started as a time pass on Orange Pie, continued through orkut as well. It wasn’t until college that I started chatting. Early years of college, it was the Yahoo IM craze. The buzzes, smileys and funny environments kept the chats alive. In fact, I started to talking to a lot of my college guys on chat first, before actually talking to them. The first casual chat actually made it easy to break the hesitation and strengthened our bonding over the years. All those who know me and who’ve seen me work, know for a fact that I type really fast.I definitely did not start at lightning speed. In fact, during my school days, I used to type pretty slowly. I completely attribute my typing speed to the long chat conversations with my friends.The course I underwent can be called, “Free Typing Training @ Institute of Kadalai”.My chatting continued through Orange Pie, Hi-Fi,Yahoo and still continues predominantly through google, although I use a variety of open source chat clients (Pidgin,Gwibber, Empathy etc) on and off.
I guess it was during my second year college, that my dearest mate Swa told me about her very geeky friend Ragesh and I told her about my very geeky friend Bharathan. Seeing how similar both of them were, we were seriously planning to get both of them to meet. Not knowing Ragesh before, it casually started on a chat on google. As Ragesh says, “Ragesh ka dokha dena mushkil hi nahi, naamunkein hain”. It was very easy to befriend him. Until date, we chat on an everyday basis on google. Be it Java or Jayalalitha or jewellery, our chat conversations span a minimum of 1000 lines. We are professional chatters now.And, not to forget Ragesh and Bharathan, the two geeks haven’t met yet, but we got them to talk over the phone 
Chatting is not just a time pass when you are jobless but has a lot of potential benefits. Its a mutual learning process. When we talk about different things, we get to understand and appreciate each others’ opinions.We get to learn new things and expand our knowledge base.I chat to get over my irritation and frustration. It feels like am actually talking about my frustration to someone, and it really doesn’t matter if the person at the other end is paying attention to your problem.Just chatting it out helps.When you chat, you are at the listening end as well, so your listening skills improve.In the long run, your confidence and communication skills also improve.As already mentioned before, your typing speed will increase by leaps and bounds. It helps you stay in touch with long lost friends and bridges distances. And, last but not the least, chatting is fun and it will keep you happy.
At this point, I’d like to specially thank all my chat friends (The list is too huge to mention) from the bottom of my heart and I hope our chatting continues as long as we live.
So, for all of you who don’t chat and who want to chat, its not too late. Install google talk or Pidgin (Its free ) and start chatting now. HAPPY CHATTING!
