Phillip Hong
19 July, 2007

A man of senior age walked to the long set of desks where I sat.

He quietly sat an antique suitcase on the table and pulled out a few pieces of reading material including the Holy Bible, and a radio with an antenna three times longer than the width of the actual receiver.

The man opens a yellow box where he started taking out a row of stamps and some stationary, taking a deep breath as he closes it. He connects his earphones onto the radio receiver and starts reading the few letters he took out.

In my mind, this quiet gentleman is probably relaxing to the air conditioning and proceeding to carry on through the vital communications taken out in the form of written letters. It's a very interesting sight to see things like this happen in a library.

Do you remember the library? Well, the last time I was here, with a purpose other than reading, it involved the computers supplied with internet close to the long rows of desks that plague the library. This was just before my pubescent period, when internet access was slowly eroding from its luxury that only businesspeople and enthusiasts had at home, least in my view.

In my eyes, I saw two startling contrasts. As children go wild within the permitted sound levels, the man sitting across from me was quietly writing an address on one of the envelopes he had out.

Advances in communication has made letter-writing obsolete. Talking to acquaintances no longer need a stamp, and even the "instant" telephone will probably be obsolete soon, replaced with crazy devices that could take photos, record video and recognise the exact hit from the past that was played in the elevator with an add-on fee.

For I am silently mourning the demise of traditional communication. Unlike older people, the only official mail I get are bills. Even the horrid tax refund is wired to my bank account at the slow crunch of a keyboard. It is too bad, really.

The gentleman quietly writing correspondence moves on with a graceful stroke of the pen.

Phillip Hong, a Woodbridge resident, is a co-host and reporter on Centre Street, our current affairs programme featuring alternative stories and interviews.