I have not known fear in recent years until yesterday when I couldn't log in to facebook, even after resetting my password. And when I tried to cheat and revisit pages from my browsing history, I came across my profile, and beside it, the link "Add as Friend".
For a moment it felt like I was dead and was visiting the world, and seeing myself as others would see me, and the feeling of disconnect was too overwhelming I turned the computer off and read my way into the night.
This morning I woke, and the computer represented the barrier keeping me out of the world of Friends, no matter how connected, or disconnected I am from all the names in the Friends List. I avoided it like the plague, and spent the morning at Holland V reading Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones before going to KoolPurpleSkool.
Returning from quartet rehearsal, I decided to give it a try again. I emailed Facebook support last night and their reply came surprisingly promptly. And effective their support was.
The sense of relief when I saw the newsfeeds made me feel extremely stupid for thus obsessing over a lame page - I didn't even feel half as freaked out when I couldn't log in to MSN for one week. But this was different. It felt as if after I had built up some sort of online identity on Facebook, to start that laborious process all over again felt too tiring, but yet I didn't know what I would do without checking friends' status updates daily.
There. The embarrassing secret is out.
My name is Elizabeth and I am a Facebook Addict.
Friday, May 09, 2008
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
never start any sentence with
And slowly the schedule is filling up with rehearsals and I am busier than I thought I would be.
And I'm trying to get used to the trying-to-spend-time-with-parents thing before they leave for a protracted period of time to Tanzania, East Africa, land of mountain water, tea, ostrich eggs and uneaten shrimp.
And I'm reading. Finished Kazuo Ishiguro's A Pale View of Hills today, to which my response is 'huh?'. I figure the cryptic meaning will come through eventually, but to dispel the fog I read No Man's Land by Graham Greene. His explicit descriptions of soul scourges are so cathartic. Janet's Repentance by George Eliot definitely deserves mention. It's about a battered wife, religious sectarianism and the essence of True Religion (not the jeans). I love the way the authorial voice, with all its astute social observations, comes through so unabashedly. The blurb at the back describes the book as strikingly modern, to which I wholeheartedly assent. Read it, even if you have no time. (If you are easily bored you can skip the first few paragraphs in which she sets the scene and introduces all the random characters).
And I will be getting a new student next week, who is described as 'quite something', which I reckon is the British version of 'one kind' in Singlish.
And since I have said goodbye to school, grammar conventions are being defenestrated in this blog.
And.
And I'm trying to get used to the trying-to-spend-time-with-parents thing before they leave for a protracted period of time to Tanzania, East Africa, land of mountain water, tea, ostrich eggs and uneaten shrimp.
And I'm reading. Finished Kazuo Ishiguro's A Pale View of Hills today, to which my response is 'huh?'. I figure the cryptic meaning will come through eventually, but to dispel the fog I read No Man's Land by Graham Greene. His explicit descriptions of soul scourges are so cathartic. Janet's Repentance by George Eliot definitely deserves mention. It's about a battered wife, religious sectarianism and the essence of True Religion (not the jeans). I love the way the authorial voice, with all its astute social observations, comes through so unabashedly. The blurb at the back describes the book as strikingly modern, to which I wholeheartedly assent. Read it, even if you have no time. (If you are easily bored you can skip the first few paragraphs in which she sets the scene and introduces all the random characters).
And I will be getting a new student next week, who is described as 'quite something', which I reckon is the British version of 'one kind' in Singlish.
And since I have said goodbye to school, grammar conventions are being defenestrated in this blog.
And.
Sunday, May 04, 2008
brain food
Books bought:
The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
The Custom of the Country - Edith Wharton
A Home at the End of the World - Michael Cunningham
Leaves of Grass - Walt Whitman
David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
I went back to ANA book store at Far East Plaza since they moved from the fourth to fifth floor and was trying to be as inconspicuous as possible but eventually the owner approached and asked me why I was gone for so long. That question brought back the trauma of the past two years that was summarised in one word "Busy."
Since the last exam I have been reduced to a spouter of monosyllables because my brain has shrunk by many inches.
Thankfully, I'm not a guy.
The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
The Custom of the Country - Edith Wharton
A Home at the End of the World - Michael Cunningham
Leaves of Grass - Walt Whitman
David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
I went back to ANA book store at Far East Plaza since they moved from the fourth to fifth floor and was trying to be as inconspicuous as possible but eventually the owner approached and asked me why I was gone for so long. That question brought back the trauma of the past two years that was summarised in one word "Busy."
Since the last exam I have been reduced to a spouter of monosyllables because my brain has shrunk by many inches.
Thankfully, I'm not a guy.
Friday, May 02, 2008
moments
My MSN chat has been down for a long time now, which explains my absence from that comfortable online community where I pretend to be 'Busy' or 'Away' to avoid conversation which defeats the purpose of going online except maybe to check out who is slacking like me.
The less I do, the less I have to blog about.
Have finished Veronica Mars First Season (Yes Meiling it took me one semester to finish watching it), am now contemplating whether to resume House or Desperate Housewives first, but because it is such a difficult decision I am distracting myselfwith this Korean drama with the unfortunate title of "Alone in Love". (Disclaimer: This has nothing to do with my current emotional state, in case anyone was speculating.)
--------------------------------------------------------
(Now that we've gotten the mundanities out of the way...)
Recently I was eating and reading at an unnamed place, and in swaggered GreenScrubsBoy. He used to go by another name, FloppyHair13. His new nick has to do with the rather hospital-looking uniform that he wears.
So Greenscrubsboy was doing the attitude walk when I poked him from behind and he removed one earphone and did his characteristic pseudogangster 'Want to fight ah' chinlift.
"Eat with me la"
*continues doing chin lifts*
And then he comes and sits next to me.
"I have definitions test tomorrow"
"Definitions of what?"
"Definitions la...ok you know what is Law of Conservation?"
"Go green?"
"No! It is the xxxxxxx... (my eyes glazed over). Whoah but I really hate the Principle of Moments. You know what is Principle of Moments?"
"Live like it's your last day alive?"
"No! It's anticlockwise moments = clockwise moments xxxxxxx" (my eyes glaze over again)"
Then he opened his bag (the bag he proclaimed to be a fashion accessory that matched his uniform instead of being used for books or pens) and started taking out his crumpled sheets of paper one by one, like a show and tell session.
It then occured to me how all the slaving away memorising all the physics definitions and doing the endless Ten Year Series served no other end than to get me into JC, and then university. Now I can't remember anything, much less gives a rat's ass about physics, while GreenScrubsBoy was trying to memorise all these sentences to get full marks on his next test. I bit my lip to stop myself from telling him that definitions wasn't really going to matter in the long run, but realised that maybe it mattered to his Self Efficacy in the short run.
The less I do, the less I have to blog about.
Have finished Veronica Mars First Season (Yes Meiling it took me one semester to finish watching it), am now contemplating whether to resume House or Desperate Housewives first, but because it is such a difficult decision I am distracting myselfwith this Korean drama with the unfortunate title of "Alone in Love". (Disclaimer: This has nothing to do with my current emotional state, in case anyone was speculating.)
--------------------------------------------------------
(Now that we've gotten the mundanities out of the way...)
Recently I was eating and reading at an unnamed place, and in swaggered GreenScrubsBoy. He used to go by another name, FloppyHair13. His new nick has to do with the rather hospital-looking uniform that he wears.
So Greenscrubsboy was doing the attitude walk when I poked him from behind and he removed one earphone and did his characteristic pseudogangster 'Want to fight ah' chinlift.
"Eat with me la"
*continues doing chin lifts*
And then he comes and sits next to me.
"I have definitions test tomorrow"
"Definitions of what?"
"Definitions la...ok you know what is Law of Conservation?"
"Go green?"
"No! It is the xxxxxxx... (my eyes glazed over). Whoah but I really hate the Principle of Moments. You know what is Principle of Moments?"
"Live like it's your last day alive?"
"No! It's anticlockwise moments = clockwise moments xxxxxxx" (my eyes glaze over again)"
Then he opened his bag (the bag he proclaimed to be a fashion accessory that matched his uniform instead of being used for books or pens) and started taking out his crumpled sheets of paper one by one, like a show and tell session.
It then occured to me how all the slaving away memorising all the physics definitions and doing the endless Ten Year Series served no other end than to get me into JC, and then university. Now I can't remember anything, much less gives a rat's ass about physics, while GreenScrubsBoy was trying to memorise all these sentences to get full marks on his next test. I bit my lip to stop myself from telling him that definitions wasn't really going to matter in the long run, but realised that maybe it mattered to his Self Efficacy in the short run.
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