Dear Diary

A few weeks ago on a sleepless night I started reading through some of my oldest entries and realized that I miss the personal, documentary style my blog used to be. Pictures are nice but I enjoyed reading detailed accounts of my memories even more. I am so glad I was so detailed (and wordy) because there are so many memories I would have otherwise forgotten. I miss the days when I wrote so freely (to an audience of one, myself) -- even on decidedly mundane topics such as what I ate for second lunch or how I procrastinated from studying. :)

So in efforts to resurrect my journaling, I will be here more often and with more words, no matter how painstakingly detailed. There are so many exciting things going on right now, I'd love to be able to look back at them 6 years from now and laugh at my frivolity.

Oblivious to the Freeway Around Them

Yup, that's my sisters. Completely oblivious to the world around them, especially when driving. Which is actually pretty terrifying as any of you can attest to if you've been in the car with Yona. After lunch today, I sent my sisters on their late way to their tax appointment while Max and I followed about 10 minutes behind. In a few short minutes we caught up to the pair on the freeway. I waved, I pointed, I laughed, and yet still no flicker of recognition from the pair. I took out my huge camera with the super long zoom lens and snapped a few photos, and yet they still didn't notice. We sped past them, slowed down behind them, then zoomed past again, and still, the two had their eyes peeled straight at the road ahead of them, as if that was the only lane in the world. Oh well.

Happy New Year~

I had dinner wtih family at my great-grandmother's house before heading up to Brentwood for countdown + drinks at my sisters' apartment. Sigh. Do I miss my black hair?

Trying to ignore the box of Sprinkles, calling my name.

I'm the oldest in my generation... here I am chillin' with a bunch of my uncles.

Cutest little cousins ever -- we like to mix things up!

GV Nonsense #1

I'm going to start a series of nonsensical Google Voice transcripts. Here's one from my greataunt to start. The original voicemail was about pearls.

Hello Sheena you need to call in the promo I need to have a media 9th and she's not. He must whacks at my mom buddy and we'll be at a what I mean yeah daddy gonna get a pass it on the all hello money at project and and. Yeah, okay. Yeah. Thank you. Bye bye.

Imagine Them Naked

I think at some point in our lives we've all heard that public speaking is the number one fear amongst people. And at another point, I'm sure we've heard the old line "imagine everyone in their underwear."

What I'm curious about is, where did this come from? I'm sure sayings like this don't just come up randomly in several different situations and catch on and spread... there is usually one originator. Like the saying, "for Pete's sake," probably started with a certain Pete in mind.

So, which perverted public speaker came up with this advice?

G'day Mate!

So, before today, I thought that no one read this blog. You see, this blog was always meant to be a private, personal blog, appearing only those who knew the super-secret URL. I started it a long, long time ago as an online journal and it morphed into a weekly log of activities for the purpose of updating my sisters when we all lived in different corners of the world. I've carefully set all of my settings to avoid search engines, crawlers and the like and I'm careful not to disclose the URL or alias to anyone other than my sisters.

So imagine my surprise when I see that it has collected 57 absolute unique visitors (according to Google analytics). This is a lot considering I've only published this blog at its new domain for about 2 weeks now. Also considering that my target audience is 4 people.

So who are you? I may never know, but at least I know where you are.



So, g'day mates, selamat datang and zdrastvooyte, I hope you enjoy your time here.

Quiet

Funny. I don't ever notice how much I like to talk, or how much I have to say, until there is no one around to talk to. Max left for Ireland at 5AM on Monday morning and Vina has been staying in LA for school/work. So for a full 2.5 days I had the house to myself. And Lulu and Cora (who make pretty good listeners, actually). It's embarrassing to admit but I end up going about my day with a mental checklist in mind. "I have to tell Max this. I have to e-mail him this. I have to text Yona now. I better tweet this. Oooh, I'll e-mail this to Aai and Vina. I better text Aai so she'll open my e-mail. Oh this and this is interesting, but my family will think I'm stupid for e-mailing it to them, I'll blog it instead."

Do I have that much to say? Or is it out of habit that I have to share everything I experience with someone? I mean, it's not out of coincidence that when I have less people to talk to, I tend to blog more. Which is actually interesting to note about the years when I started both of my blogs. I must have had nobody around to really talk to. So am I replacing human contact and attention with my online soapbox where I can freely communicate the thoughts in my head that are directed towards no one?

The concept of blogging, tweeting and Facebook statuses is interesting. Everybody dubs it as "social media" or "social networking" which implies that there is an exchange of communications or a two-sided interaction but if you think about it, it's actually a one-way communication. It is not any different than broadcasting. You expel information outwards, but just provide a feedback loop in case (1) someone reads it and (2) someone finds it compelling enough to reply.

So if this one-way broadcasting has taken over the way people socialize online and real-life (I know some of you have tweeted or read tweets while in the company of another tweeter) then how does that change the way we look at socialization? In theory one could live in isolation, void of any real-world human contact, but still remain perfectly sociable through these online networks. And no one would know the difference.

So then that raises the question, what does it mean to be popular these days? Is it the person with (a) a lot of Facebook friends, (b) a lot of twitter followers or (c) the person with a lot of comments/wall postings? In other words, the person with the most consented friendships, the most admirers or the one that engages more people in conversation?

Sigh. I need someone to talk to.