HONG KONG Hong (dpa) – By day, Denise Lundie is top trichologist who tours Asia advising balding men on how to get their hair back. But in the evenings and at weekends she is a schoolgirl who spends her time chatting and giggling with pals.
But there’s nothing unsavoury about Denise’s free-time activities. She is just one of a growing number of expatriates plugging into a website aimed at bringing old school friends back together.
So far Denise, a Scot by birth who now lives in Hong Kong’s exclusive Mid-levels district, has made contact with about 10 old classmates from Glasgow but she’s lost count of the number she has just caught up with by reading the notes they posted on the Website.
“I’ve almost died laughing,” said 32-year-old Denise, reverting to schoolgirl talk. “It never ceases to amaze me what people are doing now.”
Denise is among about one million people now registered with friendsreunited.co.uk, which claims to be one of Britain’s most visited websites. She first logged on after a friend recommended she give it a go.
“It was one night when I was feeling quite lonely. My mum had just returned home after a holiday here,” she said.
“I was on there for hours just clicking on different people and finding out what they were doing now. I was hysterical with laughter.”
The site is the creation of husband and wife team Steve and Julie Pankhurst, who came up with the idea about two years ago when Julie was pregnant and began wondering whether any of her old school chums had become mothers.
They started with a list of 24,000 current U.K. schools just over a year ago. At first, interest was slow but as time passed and word got around it grew enough to make it a full-time business.
“We expected a snowball effect but this is more like an avalanche. It’s brilliant, ” said Steve, a 37-year-old computer programmer.
It works like this. First you find your old school or college. Next you add your name to the list of ex-pupils under the year you left, plus few brief notes about your life so far and even a photo if you have the technology.
You then have two options: Sit back and wait for old admirers and adversaries to contact you or pay the five pounds annual fee and do the contacting yourself.
Denise quite happily parted with her cash and says it’s the best “fiver” she’s ever spent.
“I think its amazing,'” she said. “Especially for people like me who are away from home and missing “our ain folk” – as we say in Scotland,” she said.
Psychologists have long documented why people feel the pull back to their school days, saying it often comes at a time in life when their own children start school and they start to think about their past. Other people, like Denise, feel it when they’re isolated from family and friends.
Peta McAuley, chairwoman of Hong Kong Psychology Association, said there is also a cultural element.
She says research has shown that while identity for Westerners is an individual thing, for Asians it is collective. “Consequently, a Westerner will describe themselves in terms of “I’m 34, I look like this, I’m an engineer, I’m this and I’m that’,” she said.
“Asians will say ‘I am a member of the Tsang family, I am a graduate of Hong Kong University and I am employee of such a company.
“For this reason they are more likely to maintain contact with close friends. Asians find it unusual that we would want to try and contact someone from 20 years ago because they would never lose contact in the first place.”
Dr McAuley added that while Asians may look up old friends to “network”, Westerners are more likely do so for emotional reasons such as working over an unhappy memory, which is beneficial.
In terms of benefits, Website school reunions has got some obvious ones over the real school reunion. It’s cheaper on time and air fares for one thing.
You also don’t have to walk into a room of former school pals. Sitting safely behind your computer screen, you can still be that skinny girl in flares who aspired to be the blonde one from Abba and not a plump 40-year-old who looks like her mother.
There are drawbacks too. Face to face, it is hard to ignore someone. With e-mails you can simply press the delete button and they are gone in a split second.
One sad message posted on the friendsreunited message board from a thirty-something woman summed up the potential for disappointment.
“Where are you all?” pleaded Katie. “I’ve sent 31 messages and not one person has bothered to reply.”
Clearly, whatever Katie did at school, it was enough to make sure her classmates continued to give her the cold shoulder 20 years on.
