You are not only a tech-savvy singer, but a travel-savvy one as well—able to cross vast oceans in a single redeye and order your coffee in multiple languages. From the summer-abroaders to the bicontinentals, most of us are pretty confident in our abilities to navigate strange territories.
Just because you know how to place an international phone call, however, doesn’t mean your dad does. If your family is anything like mine, you’re probably the resident travel, foreign language, and TSA-security-procedures expert. But while you’re wandering the world, it’s important not to leave your family behind.
Sure, you know how to stay in touch with people—you Skype, you Facebook, you text—but do they know how to stay in touch with you? Your fellow singers may be tech-savvy enough to navigate their way to your inbox, but elderly grandparents, aging parents, and young children may not be. Even if your kids can Skype circles around you, someone in your family is bound to be technophobic—and in need of a little hand-holding in order to make extreme-distance connections.
With that in mind, here is a little guide to helping your loved ones connect with you while you’re away.
International Phone Calls
Placing international phone calls is always more complicated than it’s supposed to be, especially for the uninitiated. First of all, the format of the number may not be especially clear. What does + 33 (0)1 71 25 24 23 mean? Does that include the country code? Do you have to type the “plus”? Is one of those numbers the area code? What the heck are you supposed to do with the number in parentheses? Do you have to dial 1 from a landline like it’s a long-distance call?
Even if you, worldly wise voyager that you are, know the answers to these questions, many Americans don’t. Even if you figure out that +33 is the country code for France, and that the plus indicates that you have to dial 011, putting it all together is usually a trial-and-error process fraught with much Googling.
If you know—if you’re sure you know, because these things get tricky—exactly what keys must be pressed from exactly what phone you’re dealing with, you can save your family a lot of headaches by spelling it out for them—in writing, taped next to the phone. Or, in case of cell phones, enter the number into their address book exactly as it needs to be dialed (and make sure their phone plan will allow them to make international calls).
If you’re not 100 percent sure, make a few test calls first—to the country you’ll be in, not just to any foreign country. The formats for phone numbers vary from country to country, and you want to be sure what to include and what not to.
Don’t forget to warn your posse that call tones can be different in other countries. They might get confused hearing an extended beep instead of the national “ring-ring” and think the line is busy or disconnected.
Calling Cards
If you thought placing an international phone call was difficult, just wait until you try it with a calling card. You know, those scratch-off cards you buy that let you make international calls for cheap. And with an insanely long series of numbers that you have to dial.
I don’t want to knock the business model. Calling cards are often one of the best deals around if you need to economize, especially if your aunt needs to talk your ear off every time she gets you on the phone. (Since calls made with a card usually deduct a “connection fee” for each call, longer calls end up being more economical than several shorter ones.) They just add an extra layer or two of confusion, especially since they are each a little bit different.
This is something you should probably just practice with Aunt Sarah. You’ll want to buy a card with more minutes than you think you’ll use anyway, because of the connection fees I just mentioned. Call up a friend in your country of choice (or, barring that, in any country, since the issue at hand is dealing with the card itself, not the phone number) and discern if there are any tricky bits that might become confusing once you’re not there to walk her through it. Better to deal with it in advance than to have your family stressing out because they can’t figure out how to call you.
Skype
Assuming your relatives are not such Luddites that they don’t have Internet, you’re probably going to want to Skype with them. Yes, some people will always be more comfortable using the phone, but Skyping is pretty indispensable these days, especially when dealing with a low budget. So, you’ll have to convince them.
You might have to personally sit at your grandma’s computer and install the software. Just make sure you get their user ID. I had that trouble the first time I tried to Skype with my mom, who knew she had an account but didn’t know her sign-in name, so I couldn’t add her as a contact.
To most of us, instant messaging seems simpler than web camming. But technophobes tend not to like all the typing, so they might take more easily to audio and video. At any rate, practice with them at home first. Sit with your laptop in the kitchen and Skype with them on the porch, so they get the hang of it while you’re still around for tech support. If you can’t be in the same building, you can walk them through the set-up over the phone.
The good thing is that Skyping is so handy for keeping in touch, that even the least tech-savvy are willing to learn it if it means they get to talk to their precious grandkids.
Facebook
The Facebook/family issue is a big one for some people. I have some friends who use Facebook to keep in touch with their whole families, and others who outright refuse to “friend” any family members. Photos of drunken nights out, much-needed rants, and dirty jokes your friends leave on your wall can be TMI for relatives—and you might cringe to see the same coming from their side of the wall.
The technology has been around long enough, and is all pervading enough, that you and your family probably have your Facebook system comfortably worked out. Those who have accounts have them and those who don’t won’t, and you’ve come to terms with who will and won’t friend whom. I don’t think a trip abroad is necessarily a time to mess with that delicate balance. On the other hand, if it’s an extensive or even permanent move, it might be time to rethink things. If your family is used to seeing you regularly, and suddenly you’re on another continent and they won’t see you until Christmas, Facebook might be a good way for you all to keep tabs on each other. Privacy settings have changed, and it’s now pretty easy to designate your posts as visible to certain groups of friends and not others. That means you can post your drunken Oktoberfest pictures to everyone except your family (and maybe professional contacts, too).
Blogging
Here’s one you might not have thought of. Your folks may not know how to subscribe to RSS feeds, but most do know how to either bookmark or type in a website. I’ve kept several different blogs over the years and I’ve found that people who are otherwise baffled by technology will still go directly to my blog and check for updates. This is especially true if you update frequently. If you post once a day, people who use the Internet only once a day will make it part of their daily “rounds.”
The reason this works is that to the reader a blog is basically just a website. It’s not like Facebook or Twitter, where the person has to set up an account and interact and figure out what “poking” and “retweeting” mean. They can simply go to the website and read, like any other website. You can’t expect them to set up a Google Reader to receive your updates, but if they are interested in hearing updates from you, a blog is an easy, low-commitment way to do so.
Bon voyage—and don’t forget to send your family lots and lots of postcards!
