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I got acquainted with chat list not very long ago, but I really feel I had been left out from something very entertaining and funny now. This sort of communication through computers is new to me, and I felt really reluctant to use it on a permanent basis. I simply didn't find it attractive to sit in front of a screen for hours wasting my precious time. But I was wrong, I have to admit it.

In the beginning I was offered a lot of lists to choose from and I saw some promising names for lists. But my friends told me that besides chat there doesn't exist a real life-like list where one could enjoy the flow of ideas, opinions and thoughts. I have tried some but they just do not have people, who would respond a bit, so I gave up. I decided to write about the list that most people are likely to choose.

The first thing I did was to ask the center to send me the list of names subscribed to chat. It's enough to say that there are plenty of them. The countries they are from vary a lot but there seems to be two great groups: the americans and the japanese. (Of course many hungarians can also be found on the list, thanks to some enthusiastic teachers.) To look at the countries is important to see if e nglish is the first or the second language of the students. We may think that letters and massages from the states are written with perfect English but that is quite far from the truth. There must be quite a number of students in the states who have immigrated there from a foreign country thus practising their English just as well as we do. So we can draw an important conclusion: most of the students sending and receiving massages through this system use English as a second (or may be a third) language.

The most sriking feature of the list is that it doesn't exclude a certain sense of humour. Actually if a "sending" is not of a funny nature or does not evoke an entertaining or relaxing feeling in us it is quite likely doomed to "die", which means it will not get any responses and reactions from the members of the list. Jokes are constant parts of messages. And it is needless to say how hard it is to translate a joke so that everyone will laugh. It tries everyone's abilities.

If you want to chat on chat-list you have to think of an extremely interesting and original topic, otherwise the others will ignore you along with your boring messages. And that is not bad, because it helps you get rid of the "grey" ideas and thoughts that come to your mind without having to think about your own opinion. Personal letter-changes are more frequent. When I introduced the topic of smoking, by asking for suggestions on how to quit this bad habit, many simply answered to my address, which is fine with me, but the others get left out of the discussions. I would be angry to learn that others are having great fun without me. In fact, I know it is happening every moment.

Absolutely no political topic is rewarded from the members. There was an opinion once on the changes happening in South Africa and no one reacted but me. I am not that interested in politics, I was just polite enough to give this opinion a reply. But if this tendency continues that no one really writes for the sake of fun, I might get tired of doing it as well and go home to sleep.

I hope this system will work next term as well. I would like to be subscribed to it and attribute to its success in establishing valuable connection between students from foreign coutries.