Thank you FaceTime!

If you know me personally or have been reading my previous posts, you should know by now that I’m currently in a long distance relationship. HA. Distance.  Between California to Jakarta, this time. Waiiit.. this time? Yep, this is not my first time being in a relationship that involves distance. My previous relationship also involved distance, I was in the UK and he was in Jakarta. Then I went back home to Jakarta and he went to Sumatra. It lasted around one year. Did it end because of distance? I don’t know. But it was not meant to be.

Anyway.. I’m not going to compare the two relationships here.. but I just want to tell you, it is very easy to be in a long distance relationship nowadays! Yep, you read it right – easy. Now let me tell you my story..

Back in 2010, I had to rely on Blackberry Messenger to communicate. Skype was almost a luxury – given the fact that I only had a Blackberry phone which did not support video calls, and time difference made us hard to find convenient time for both of us to be able to be in front of the computer (not to mention Indonesia’s rather slow internet speed!). Once every week would be a blessing, a ‘quality’ call which lasted more than 30 minutes would be a jackpot!
Of course of course, I have to be fair. Good ol’ Blackberry phone allowed me to send and receive pictures, voice notes, and emails. That’s something.

Now, I’ve been talking to R for almost three years now. We both used Blackberry phone during the first 1,5 years and during that time we also had a couple of times of Skype calls, but after we both changed our phones to iPhone.. boy communicating was easy breezy! Like Blackberry, iPhone has an instant messaging feature, iMessage, which allows you to send text, voice notes, and pictures. But then there’s FaceTime. Our life saviour! Even before officially being in a relationship, we would spend at least an hour every day talking through FaceTime. The 14-15 hours time difference did not seem to be a problem, nor that it is a problem now. His morning is my night, so normally we talk before I go to bed/he goes to work and while my morning is his afternoon, we talk on my way to the office/on his way home from work.

With FaceTime, me and R could talk and see each other without have to spend time in front of the computer. We can do it whenever, wherever. Even with the new iOs 7 launched late last year, FaceTime now has Audio version, which is like a regular phone call, without the video. Makes it even easier! If previously I had to (at least) find a quiet place and decent spot so we could FaceTime, nowadays I could just use Audio FaceTime when it’s not convenient for either of us to use video. YAY!

I know being in a long distance relationship is not the ideal situation.. but if you have no other choice, might as well work your best to make the relationship work, right? Let me tell you, with the help of FaceTime, I have less things to worry about. Now why don’t I use Skype? or other messaging platforms? Simply because we both happen to use iPhone and somehow FaceTime’s connection is more stable than Skype, or other platforms’.

To end my story, here’s a snapshot of my latest #thankyoufacetime moment. It was taken last Sunday night Jakarta time (Morning in California), and we were talking before R decided to play basketball. He then decided to “take” me with him because the park was empty and he missed me  we still wanted to talk –  at first he was just sitting in the bench and we were talking, when suddenly his phone went off and he had to charge it. Lucky the park has an electrical socket put conveniently, so he could place his phone, charge it, while let me watch him shoot some balls 🙂

Though it was only for a while, seeing him playing basketball made me so happy! I know there are a lot of moments that I had to miss because of distance, but I finally got the chance to see him doing one of the things that he loves. I guess that was one of the things that made our long distance relationship easier. Just like what’s written in Apple’s website, FaceTime really made me feel that I was there in person, even though I was not. So thank you, FaceTime! 😀