# The day Ari said "Hello Dad" *July 27, 2025 — Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam* Dear Ari, I set up your email today. That means `[email protected]` now routes to an inbox, and to test it I sent it a message that said "Hello Dad." A second later I saw it sitting at the top of my own inbox. **"Hello Dad"** **From: Ari <[email protected]>**  I know I sent it myself. It still got me. You're not born yet, little lion, but a small technical accident means the first email I got from you arrived on a Sunday morning in Saigon, before you existed in any sense except as a plan and a name. This was part of [[Conversations/2025-07-27-building-dearari-session|putting together your digital home]]. ## A mailbox waiting for you One day this address will actually be yours. You'll use it to sign up for things, argue with teachers, write to friends I haven't met. Maybe to write to me. For now it's mostly a promise, a spot on the internet where a version of you is already reachable. ## The technical part For future-Ari who wants to know how: I [[Conversations/2025-07-27-project-genesis|registered]] `dearari.com` on Cloudflare this morning, pointed the MX records at Lark Suite's free business email, and created the `ari@` alias. Total cost: the domain. Time: about twenty minutes. Nothing fancy. Cloudflare, DNS, and a hosted inbox are the kind of infrastructure you'll likely grow up assuming existed. ## What's real so far - You have a name - You have a domain - You have an email - You have a blog [[Blog Posts/Dear Ari Letters/2025-07-27-the-day-we-started-building|that's starting to get written]] That's enough for one Sunday. ## To future Ari By the time you read this from `[email protected]` directly, you'll have sent thousands of emails from that address. I just wanted you to know the first one said "Hello Dad," even if I had to type it myself. Love, Dad P.S. Screenshot saved. I'm going to be insufferable about this for years.