How many e-addresses have you got?

I started to get to know about Internet and actively e-mailing in the year 1997. I remember that the first e-mail I received was from Jane (I was still in Bandung/Jakarta and she was studying in Eindhoven), who laughed when I put dates on my e-mail as if in a hand-written mail. I remember also that at that time I was using a Hotmail address.
Not long after (early 1998 to be more exact), I myself started to study in The Netherlands and received a new e-mail address: the school's account. I recall that this year was when I was exposed to chatting (I forgot with which provider) for the first time. I started using fake names for this purpose and then started losing interest after things got really weird. Besides, I had to concentrate on my thesis. But I can't help being addicted to e-mailing. This is really a cool way to keep in touch with family and friends abroad. There's no day ('xcuse me, "no hour" is more like it) without receiving or sending e-mails. I had an additional address, from Yahoo!, since mailing lists started to emerge. By then, my Yahoo! address was only used for archive purposes (I didn't use the e-mail actively).

1999, graduating from that school brought the consequence of losing my school e-mail account as well. Fine, I still had my Hotmail and Yahoo! address - and, in around 2000, HetNet. By then, we had this broadband stuff that relieved me from the worries of blocking the phone line too long and paying the online bills by duration. Oh how I surfed the Internet!
Somehow I didn't actively use my Hotmail anymore and one day my Hotmail account was gone. I lost all my Hotmail contacts, which is a pity. My Yahoo! account is checked quite often because of the Yahoo! mailing lists that I joined. Meanwhile, other free e-mail providers were booming..
2001, I got another e-mail account, from school, and I'm using it mainly for research purposes. Much later (2005) I chose to also use GMail as it can store huge files, which I need for research purposes as well. So far, I can manage to handle all these e-addresses actively.

I installed Yahoo! Messenger on my iMac. Used it for a while and then stopped. I re-activated it not long ago, in order to chat with people from Jalansutra mailing list and admitedly got addicted to the Jalansutra Chatroom. I was first invited by Arie the genuine banci teh and bandar chatroom. Guys, you really are ____!! (insert words that mean: "indespensable" and the likes).
It was about the same time that I started to sign up for Friendster. It was Dina and Dian who kept inviting me to join Friendster. Again and again. So I gave up and sign in, and was having "Friendster Fever" for a while - you know, keep searching and adding friends! I enjoyed this networking because I got connected to long-lost friends, although not too many. I am still searching for my Sang Timur school friends!

I was aware of Blogs and such, but didn't get the urge to use any. That's because I know I won't be able to keep up with updating the contents and all. So I was just reading other people's Blog (most frequent visit: to Neil Gaiman's Journal!), until I was exposed to Multiply. I don't quite remember who introduced me to this device, but when I browsed it I liked it righaway because it provides different 'compartments' for different purposes (while most Blogs I saw was one big compartment fort everything). It's like Friendster, but with extra services (and it's still free).
It didn't take long until I received invitations to go to similar networking providers (including address books and such): Hi5, MySpace, BeBo, SMS, Ringo.. What if I didn't accept all those invitations?! Would I be cut off from my families and friends who invited me? (I hope not) And what if I accepted all those invitations?! How would I keep tracks on my accounts, different names, different passwords?! How would I update all my accounts?! I have to admit that I am actually neglecting a couple of different accounts right now. Hm.. what would become of them? Digital optic fibre junks? Is it polluting anything?

Anyway, now I'm actively using these e-mail addresses: HetNet, Yahoo! and TU Delft and maintaining my Multiply as a semi-Blog. I also check my Friendster once in a while (and now they started to offer Friendster Blog as well! Tsk tsk tsk..) - especially for the Messages I got or for the Bulletin Board. The rest should be satisfied with once-a-month visit or so. What a world.