Papa left us to work abroad when i was six.  I can still recall how sad we all are because he is a hands-on dad and we love spending time with him.  He can whip the most delicious meal and he can tell the greatest bedtime stories.  But my mom’s heavy with our youngest sister and at that time working abroad is the the only solution to our financial problems.

He was allowed to have a month vacation once a year but it wasn’t enough.  Back then long distance phone calls cost and email is unheard of.  So we write Papa long letters to communicate.  Sometimes we make and design our own greeting cards and send it through snail mail.  Mama got a P.O. Box in Alabang and we are so delighted when we see a letter inside.

Other times, we do ‘voice tapes’.  We pretend to talk to Papa while recording.  When we started our piano lessons, we would play, record and include it on our voice tapes.  Such is our means of communication as international calls are very expensive.  We do phone calls too but rarely and if ever we do we are always hurrying.

Those are things of the past.  Now, we have the convenience of instant messaging and emails instead of snail mail.  International calls has become cheaper especially if you make use of online phone cards.  Pingo’s got a global brand of virtual calling cards with amazing low rates.  To make sure that you are getting really low phone card rates, they have Pingo’s RateWatcher.  You will even receive up to 4 hours of free International calls just for signing up.  And oh, they are also giving away $5 to the first 250 Pingo usermercial videos posted.

How i wish we had this back then.

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