Here’s a neat idea. Ever think about sending yourself a letter to be delivered in the future? Well FutureMe.org offers a service that allows you to send an email to yourself (or others) up to 25 years away.
After contemplating the obvious, 1) will this service really be around in 25 years, and 2) will i have this same email address in 25 years, I started to think about the tough stuff. What would I actually say to myself? (sounds like a great creative writing exercise to me)
So for now, I am going to do what I have done numerous times before when testing new software (blogs, emailing software, ftp) … and just simply send myself this familiar message, “just testing to see if this actually works”. And if it does work, in 25 years, I may just give this another shot and try to be a bit more profound.
Hi, today is December 21, 2005.
Grandson Kieren Chua (dob November 26, 2004) is having a temperature of 38 degrees C. He is not active today although he continues to smile and laugh when grandma and I drilled him on the first four letters of the alphabet. Hope that he will grow up to be a bright and cheerful young man when this email is read on December 21, 2030. Guess I will still be around to enjoy his pleasant laughter.
Hi, today is December 22, 2005 at 4.45 pm Singapore time.
The Chinese in Singapore and Malaysia as well as many other countries around the world are celebrating this day as the Winter Festival Day. To some Chinese this is a more important day than the traditional Chinese New Year’s Day which falls on January 29 next year, the year of the dog when I will be completing one full cycle of life which is reckoned to be 60 years.
Today I had a few rice balls cooked in a syrup together with groundnuts, a traditional food to mark this day, at a foodstall not far from my home, on my return from shopping in Johor Baru, a Malaysian state north of Singapore. Will I have all my remaining teeth to enjoy this delicacy in 2030? Can’t wait to find out.
Today marks the day that the Singapore health minister, Mr Khaw Boon Wan, promised the public that “any wrong-doers will face the full extent of the law” in reference to the abuse of power by the ex- CEO (TT Durai) and management of the National Kidney Foundation, and the apparent corruption of power. The main issue is that only 10 cents out of every dollar donated by the public was spent on patient care, with most of the other 90 cents not well accounted for. Just wondering whether the public will resume its generous donations to help kidney patients. What will the shape of the NKF be like when I read this email again in 2030? (People fail to learn the lesson that abuse of power is inevitable when office bearers like TT Durai stay too long in their jobs. The history of China is replete with stories of faithful government officials turning to corruption when their tenure was too long. Why can’t we remember this lesson from history?)
Today the traffice flow along the Second Link bridge that connects the southern part of West Malaysia to Singapore was smooth in both directions. I spent little time commuting along it, compared to the massive jams that took away three hours of my life last Saturday afternoon. Despite protests in the forum of the Straits Times, the main English newspaper in Singapore, about the excessive traffic jams on weekends, the government is apparently doing nothing about it because it fears the terrorist threat. However, if the government bothers to operate the other two currently unused complexes in the Tuas immigration and customs checkpoint, then surely the problem of massive jams will be substantially reduced and stringent checks on vehicles could still be conducted. I am looking forward to reading this email again in the year 2030 to learn whether there had been a terrorist attack on Singapore and whether unnecessary massive jams still frustrate motorists who commute between the two countries using the Second Link.
I hope that I will be around in 2030 and believe I will, considering the current state of my physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual health (PIES). Keeping my fingers crossed. Can’t wait to read this email on December 22, 2030.
FYI – Time Netsule (the Internet time capsule) solves the email problem by giving you a unique id so you can locate your message in the future even if your email changes. They’ve got other cool features too like sharing your message with friends BEFORE it’s sealed…