TheSmithFamily Posted January 7, 2013 Share Posted January 7, 2013 I was at one of my best friends weddings over the weekend. She emigrated to New Zealand about 3 years ago and has married a kiwi. Their wedding was in England but they are to live in NZ. She comes from a very large and close family and when I spoke to her she said that if it wasn't for Skype, particularly at the start of her move, then she wouldn't have been able to stay. She says it was the thing that made the difference. Now she has applied for residency & is unlikely to move back to the UK which is great. So im just wondering if anyone else has found Skype to be such an important tool once emigrated? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
noworriesmate Posted January 7, 2013 Share Posted January 7, 2013 My son is 'dating' a UK girl who he only sees once a year (for a month) in person but everyday on Skype, no idea how he would cope without it! NWM Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dmjg Posted January 7, 2013 Share Posted January 7, 2013 Oh spends more time talking to her parents on Skype from here than she did when they lived 10 miles away in the uk. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted January 7, 2013 Share Posted January 7, 2013 We use Skype a lot (and before that IM, IRC and so on). Chat to family in Aus every other week or so and I use it to call and vid chat with friends in the UK and elsewhere in the world. We are very fluid using it. Don't just sit in front of the screen and gab. We tend to swap over, one chats for a few, son comes along showing whoever is the other end his latest lego build or dinosaur, school work and so on. He even used to play hide and seek when he was smaller. Other times when its big family gatherings or something we just leave it open, turn it to face the room and family the other end can see what's going on. Birthdays with kids is a good one for that. Get inventive, dont't just sit on your backside when using it and its a fab tool for keeping in touch. I'd advise not relying on it too heavily or having it become something that takes over. Ultimately, you move overseas, you need to get on with living there. If you are hanging on to Skype daily with people then you are not really giving yourself a chance to adjust and get out there and embrace your new life and home. Limit it to once a week or something so you have stuff to actually talk about. If its a couple using it when apart, then I can get using it daily. Hubby and I used to talk daily on IRC or messenger but we also lived our lives. When he goes away for work now we text, email and Skype maybe once a week. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fish.01 Posted January 7, 2013 Share Posted January 7, 2013 We talked to my mum and dad 15km away from us in Brisbane and my brother and family in Canada today. Also weekly calls to my wife's dad in the UK. We probably use it even more for local calls than we do for distance calls so very useful as the little kiddies always love being on screen and come running when they hear the skype ringtone. Similar to Snifter's point, my brother in Canada uses an iPad and carries it around while doing nightly routine of feeding, putting kids to bed etc so we get to see them in their natural environment and he doesn't have to put life on hold to chat. We also turn it on at family functions so UK granda can join in for birthday cake cutting and the like... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheSmithFamily Posted January 7, 2013 Author Share Posted January 7, 2013 Perhaps I didn't explain my question properly. I'm familiar with Skype and use it often. I was just wondering if others who have made the move to Australia relied on it heavily when they first moved out to Oz as my friend did when she went to NZ? I just found it a big thing to say that without Skype she would have returned to the UK! Do others feel the same? Sent from my Lumia 800 using Board Express Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RockDr Posted January 8, 2013 Share Posted January 8, 2013 I wouldn't say Skype in particular, but without easy and cheap communication to home (weekly rather than daily in my case) I would have definitely found it much harder coming over here. (Not that I would have ended up out here anyway without Skype since OH and I were in a long distance relationship using it daily prior to my move...) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest littlesarah Posted January 8, 2013 Share Posted January 8, 2013 I rarely use Skype, mainly because the only internet we can have is mobile and the delay is too annoying! I phone my parents every couple of weeks, and my sister about the same (although she has kids so it's not always so frequent). My parents won't use Skype (they're not really interested in the internet, & are often away enjoying their retirement!), so I can't compare how things are with how they could've been. But I feel settled here and have no desire to return to the UK. I think it may also depend on the nature of your relationship with your family before you leave the UK. I'd lived on the other side of the country for 10 years, so only saw my sister a few times a year and my parents every 2 or 3 months, and we're not the kind of family who ever did everything together. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Parley Posted January 8, 2013 Share Posted January 8, 2013 Do you pay to use skype or is it free ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Notts Posted January 8, 2013 Share Posted January 8, 2013 Free for Skype-to-Skype calls/video calls, not free for Skype to telephone calls. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CollegeGirl Posted January 8, 2013 Share Posted January 8, 2013 I'll chime in on the "don't know what I'd do without Skype" camp. My fiance and I have spent probably 18 hours on it over the last couple of weeks (with the holidays we spent more time than usual). We used it to open each others' gifts in front of one another on his Christmas and then mine (he's in Australia, I'm in the US). Then we toasted one another on New Year's Eve at midnight (my time). He uses it weekly to talk to his parents in the US, and once our PMV is approved (I hope I hope I hope I hope!) we will add my family to the Skype rotation and use it to talk to them every week as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
B1K3R Posted January 11, 2013 Share Posted January 11, 2013 So im just wondering if anyone else has found Skype to be such an important tool once emigrated? It depends. In my case it screwed me big time as my wife's parents kept calling through Skype every single F$^k%%^g day, nagging and crying, and miss you here and there and all this S^h%££^t which did not help her to fly from her nest and eventually persuaded her to go back... People are different, true, so it could be of great help or a psychological break down. Cheers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NicF Posted January 11, 2013 Share Posted January 11, 2013 My mum still won't skype yet because she gets too emotional. We've been here since July ans have recently had a breakthrough in that she will now talk to me on the phone and even phoned us the other day. She won't talk to the kids though in case she gets upset and upsets them. I don't like to tell her that they wouldn't talk to her, but anyway. My Dad isn't on skype I don't think so that's not really an issue. When we first moved most of my communicating was done by email. Probably still will be as I can write an email any time ans don't have to worry about what time it is in the UK. To be honest I think I would have settled the same even if I had no communication with my family so I would say it has made very little difference to me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quoll Posted January 11, 2013 Share Posted January 11, 2013 Personally I have little time for Skype and I think it would make the emigration process far more difficult than it used to be back in the day of aerogrammes and 3 minute phone calls. I cant imagine anything worse than being constantly reminded of what you have left behind, what you are missing out on and also reminding your families of what they are missing out on with respect to grandkids etc. I can imagine that FB, twitter, skype and all the other social media make a difficult situation even more difficult - it was so much easier when you could adopt a sort of out of sight and out of mind approach! My son and daughter in law Skype occasionally for the kids to say hello to us (and for us to basically babysit the eldest while she goes off and does her own thing - what the!!!!!!) but it isnt a very satisfactory situation and gradually the kids are less and less interested with talking to these people who live in a box on the desk (well, the little one is very little!). We do try and read with the eldest but its not the same as sitting her on your knee and pointing at the pictures although we do have matching sets of Rupert - s that we are both on the same page The time difference is a bloody nuisance, especially with kids on one end and late rising oldies on the other - finding a time that is good for all is very difficult. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ToowoombaBlue Posted July 3, 2014 Share Posted July 3, 2014 Free for Skype-to-Skype calls/video calls, not free for Skype to telephone calls. I know this is an old post, but i thought I'd chip in with my experience of Skype, we used Skype quite a few times for a total of approximately 3 hours in our first week in Aus, in that time we used 5gb of data which cost us over $50. So anyone who said Skype is free, think again and think about your data allowance! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul1Perth Posted July 3, 2014 Share Posted July 3, 2014 I was at one of my best friends weddings over the weekend. She emigrated to New Zealand about 3 years ago and has married a kiwi. Their wedding was in England but they are to live in NZ. She comes from a very large and close family and when I spoke to her she said that if it wasn't for Skype, particularly at the start of her move, then she wouldn't have been able to stay. She says it was the thing that made the difference. Now she has applied for residency & is unlikely to move back to the UK which is great. So im just wondering if anyone else has found Skype to be such an important tool once emigrated? To be honest I would rather phone, say what I've got to say and get on with life here. We've tried Skype to family and the slight delay is annoying, we end up talking over each other then eventually when we run out of things to say no-one wants to say cheerio and we end up sat staring at each other. My wife has face timed my Sister a couple of times, that's not so bad, usually one of them has something on we have to rush off for. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul1Perth Posted July 3, 2014 Share Posted July 3, 2014 I know this is an old post, but i thought I'd chip in with my experience of Skype, we used Skype quite a few times for a total of approximately 3 hours in our first week in Aus, in that time we used 5gb of data which cost us over $50. So anyone who said Skype is free, think again and think about your data allowance! It's never cost us anything, the laptop, PC or ipad connects to our home router and we have unlimited data upload/download. My son face timed us when he was away for 3 months last year from his hotel room in Greece (or somewhere on his travels) I think the hotel had free wifi, so even that would have been free. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beddy Posted July 3, 2014 Share Posted July 3, 2014 Skype , face time , facebook and phone calls were all important to us from the very start and still are to us and our family back home .If we only had phone calls I don't think we would have settled in as well as we have . Although we are soo far away we still feel that connection with our family as we can see them ,chat to them and see what they have have been doing etc for us it seems to break the distance and isolation from them Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alaska Posted July 3, 2014 Share Posted July 3, 2014 We had a pretty meagre data allowance (20gb a month) and Skype, probably 3-4 times a week to our families and never came close to using it up. Different when using a mobile allowance of course! We have found it invaluable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted July 3, 2014 Share Posted July 3, 2014 I know this is an old post, but i thought I'd chip in with my experience of Skype, we used Skype quite a few times for a total of approximately 3 hours in our first week in Aus, in that time we used 5gb of data which cost us over $50. So anyone who said Skype is free, think again and think about your data allowance! It uses your data, thats a given. So if you are on a pre paid dongle or some such, yes, it will use it up. Same as if you watch You Tube clips, upload pics to FB or some such and other things. It is 'free' in the sense of if you have an internet connection, then you don't pay to use it for making video calls and stuff. But it will still use data. If you happen to be on an unlimited plan or one with a decent allowance, its fine. If you have a crummy data plan or don't realise how much data you are using it can catch you out if you happen to Skype a lot within the month. Its a good tool for many for keeping in touch. Not good if on a pre paid dongle or or limited mobile phone plan but its can fill a short term need till a better internet connection is in place. We use it on iPad, iMac and our phones but I would never use it on my phone when away from home as it would eat into my data plan on my phone and possibly put me over. So only use it at home when using the home broadband. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chall77 Posted July 3, 2014 Share Posted July 3, 2014 I love Skype but has anyone used Whatsapp for text messaging? I find that just as good in many ways and can use it to stay in touch with mates all over the place if you have a half decent data allowance on your call plan. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flag of convenience Posted July 3, 2014 Share Posted July 3, 2014 Got by with letters and phone long before Skype. Even now prefer phone and e mail. Use Skype on special occasions only. There feels something forced and even false, especially if one side over do the duration. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul1Perth Posted July 4, 2014 Share Posted July 4, 2014 I love Skype but has anyone used Whatsapp for text messaging? I find that just as good in many ways and can use it to stay in touch with mates all over the place if you have a half decent data allowance on your call plan. We use whatsapp, it's good. Don't know if it's going to stay that way since it got bought out by facebook. Strange that they paid $19B US for it, I know you are supposed to be charged for using it after a year but me and the wife have had it for a few years now and have never been charged. If we did we just move on to another free app. Don't know how facebook are going to make any money out of it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted July 4, 2014 Share Posted July 4, 2014 whatsapp with mates, skype with the family. In fact Skype means I see more of my parents than I would if I was in UK. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
akiralx Posted July 4, 2014 Share Posted July 4, 2014 For some reason Skype is always slow and pixellated for us, whereas Facetime is excellent, like they're in the next room. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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