Archive for August, 2008
Facends
Aug 28th
I have more than 680 Facends. But what the hell is a Facend? Simply put – its Facebook Friend.
Thanx to social networking sites like Facebook or Orkut or MySpace – meaning of the word Friend has changed forever. In good old days Friendship was all about knowing people, understanding them, be there for them when the chips were down, share a laugh/joke, and finally accept friends just the way they are. There was not false pretence between real friends. Actually Facebook started as a network for Friends but now it has become free for all. There are many acquaintances on Social Networks rather than friends. Sometimes people send invitations to connect & it almost becomes very difficult to turn them down. So its almost like trespassers on Facebook are made friends and hence I call them Facends.
As a result we can’t speak our minds openly and we all pretend (of course there are exceptions).
I’m genuinely thinking of a Network that is ONLY for FRIENDS rather than FACENDS.
Things we take for Granted
Aug 24th
Typhoon Nuri went away & the weather improved. We managed to catch up with friends over lunch to celebrate my birthday. As always I got a couple of lovely books – biography of Lakshmi Mittal, A lonely planet coffee table book on World Cities, and a BBC Book on 20th Century Innovations.
As I browsed through them today I realised how many things we take for granted today were the biggest innovations of their times. In some cases its a work of a lifetime but we seldom acknowledge that. Just goes on to prove that what you innovate today will be taken for granted tomorrow.
Reincarnation
Aug 22nd
This is my new blogging avatar. I had a few avatars before and the last one was quite good. But it died a slow death because of my crazy travel over last 18 months and inertia to connect over the weekends. I then installed a blog uploader app on my desktop & I kept jotting my thoughts. It didn’t work that well.
So finally beginning of this month I killed my inertia – spoke to Parag – who has always helped in setting things – and started configuring the blogging platform.
I was planning to launch it over the weekend but today we got an unexpected holiday because of a severe typhoon headed Hong Kong’s way. Incidentally it happens to be my birthday as well and hence it made perfect sense to launch.
Here’s to my new Avatar – Rays, Reflections & Refraction.
Thank You Parag!!!
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