i bought my childhood back for 10 bucks. how? thru wii. wow, the wonders of modern technology!

my younger sister bought me and my hubby a wii as a belated wedding present (took her that long but i’m not complaining as it paid off). she told me that i can download old school super mario brothers for a very cheap price. i got excited at the prospect of playing it once again and reliving the glory of finishing the game so i wasted no time and made the purchase. and as expected, i got nostalgic.

mario and i (ok, luigi too. though i rarely played him) go back a long way and by that, i meant the age of family computers. ugh, i’m that old. my mom gave us a famicom as a christmas present when i was in sixth grade.and i remember spending christmas break that year playing and mastering  as many games as possible and as much as i could. actually, i can’t remember anyone in the family playing as much as i did. possibly because i hogged it. but there were a few times when i caught my mom or my dad playing past midnight.

i was an innately skilled player back in the day. i finished a number of games when no one else in the family had. but finishing the super mario after countless attempts (thanks to hundred lives) would always be the peak of my famicom career. soon after, i grew up and stopped playing altogether. in a way, saving the princess signified the end of my childhood and became the threshold of my youth. indeed, i finished the game when i was a high school freshman, at a time when my interest already shifted to boys living and tangible and mario, the small, plump, mustached mario, obviously was an alternate reality and no more than a childhood friend whom i needed to help save her princess.

yesterday, i played super mario with the same level of enthusiasm that i had when i was a kid. and it’s comforting to know that i haven’t lost my skills yet. i managed to get the hundred lives and navigated myself thru world 8. i haven’t finished the game yet. i figured there is no hurry this time. when my mom saw me playing, she said that i still sat the same way as i did before while playing. and she too remembered the other games she used to play – circus, galaga, 1982, rainbow island and the car race. all those memories. wouldn’t it be nice to have a hundred lives and some ‘one-up’ in between, so we can have the luxury of dying if we’d rather start a new life over or we can get as many chances as we want when we err? it’s ok though that we don’t get these life bonuses in the real world. at least for now, technology has enabled us to relive snippets of our childhood for a few bucks. in truth though, what it’s done to me is something that cannot be quantified. priceless, it truly is.

it’s summer and the weather lately has been pushing me to read r/hr fan fictions.

i started reading harry potter fan fictions summer of 2005. the sixth book in the series was recently released then and after reading the book in a span of two days (i attended a party so i wasn’t able to finish it in a day as much as i wanted to), i felt that there was something amiss. obviously, i craved for more. being the self-confessed obsessed ron-hermione shipper that i was (still am and will forever be), i thought that many things happened in between those pages that j.k. rowling chose not to write about. i sought for the undisclosed romance that  i was absolutely convinced existed in the missing pages of the book.

so i went to the next best thing – google. i searched for stories that would quench my thirst for r/hr romance and google did not disappoint. in fact, i was overwhelmed with the results i got. i never imagined that there were so many thousands of fans as devoted to r/hr as i was, whose written works were what exactly i was looking for.

i remember the first couple of stories i read – the multi-chaptered la vie en rose and the one-shot not as a last resort. i enjoyed both because the characters stayed true to the books and there was a story to support them. but there was too much literature that it was difficult to filter which ones were well-written and which ones were as bad as tabloid reading. fortunately for me, i soon found out through my sister that there is checkmated.com, a ron-hermione fan fiction archive. all the stories in the site are not only well-written; they are also proof read and edited before publishing. since then, i have stopped googling r/hr stories and became a regular visitor of checkmated. to this day, my two favorite fan fictions can be found in checkmated: the book of morgan la fey and the final reckoning by lavenderbrown.

if there is one thing to be said of fan fictions, it is that the magnitude of people’s imagination is truly limitless. and i envy such imagination.

abashedly confused. this is how i feel after finishing h. murakami’s kafka on the shore. the story seems simple in the beginning. kafka, a 15 year old runaway tries to be the toughest teen in the world while searching for a home away from home. on the other hand, nakata who has the strange ability of talking to cats is hired to find a missing cat and in the process murders a man (AND SPOILER ALERT!) who happens to be kafka’s father. so what’s so complicated about this? everything in between. weird things that happens in the story and those metaphors that abound and i don’t even know where to begin with – kafka waking up with a blood on his shirt, the mysterious passing out of school children that wiped out nakano’s memories, the appearance of johnny walker and colonel sanders, the oedipal propechy that is the salient theme, the ghost of a 15-year old ms. saeki appearing at night, the entrance stone, the forest. just remembering all these images in the book make my head spin in absolute chaos.

but this is not to say i didn’t like the book. oddly enough, i enjoyed reading the book, in a masochistic way of liking it. it’s a pain because there are so many things i wish i understand but i don’t and yet it pleases me at the same time because it’s so imaginative in style and i’m not even sure if there is indeed only one way of looking at it. this is to say, it is not open to any other interpretation but the author’s. gah! i wish i was back in school taking up a course on japanese literature with focus on murakami’s works. perhaps then i would gain better and in-depth understanding of his writing.

my favorite part in the book was when kafka walks into the small quiet town in the heart of a forest near the end of the story. it is so surreal in every way imaginable. is kafka in limbo? in a parallel universe? or in dharma initiative? (lost fans anyone?) the possibilities are limitless to the analytical mind. i read somewhere that the key to understanding murakami’s works is to read the book again. but right now, i’d rather be in a state of confusion than be lost in such metaphysical world. in truth, i’d rather listen to kafka on the shore if this recording truly exists. i’m pretty sure it’d be as haunting as the song somewhere in time.

personally, reading kafka on the shore is like watching a lyrical dancer on stage. i don’t really get the overall meaning of the dance but i feel the emotions associated to it and with this, i conjure my own images. for me, i think this is enough because understanding its totality may take away the true beauty that lies beneath. and i’d rather preserve it this way, thank you very much.

 

i went to ross yesterday and i got myself some great hauls. for anyone who is not familar with ross, it’s the capitalist USA’s gift to middle class shoppers and bargain hunters like i am. ross carries ‘designer and brand name fashions for women, men, kids and home at everyday savings of 20-60% compared to department and specialty stores.’ they also have home decor at very affordable prices. in fact, most of our first purchases for our apartment in santa barbara were from ross – the kitchen and dining ware, the beddings, the home accents. ross is very similar to marshalls although i think the former’s prices are still a tad cheaper than the latter’s.

 

anyway, i was so ecstatic to have bought brand new DVD set of lord of the rings: two towers and return of the king platinum series special extended edition for only $4.99 each. no kidding, halflings! it’s like gollum finding my precious under the river. it’s a little unfortunate that there is no the fellowship of the ring. but i’m planning to scrounge around the other ross stores here in the hope of being able to buy it too.

 

LOTR is my favorite movie of all time. i mean if someone asks me what my favorite movie is, i will say LOTR without even thinking twice. i have seen the movie trilogy countless times – in the theatres, in DVD, in cable and local TV channels and yet i would still want to watch it a thousand times over. since its DVD release, i’ve always wanted to get myself a copy but everytime, the cheap side of me overpowers my urge to buy the set.

 

i can’t wait to watch the films on DVD along with the documentaries about the filming process. but for now excuse me while i salivate over my latest precious possessions. 

‘… It’s really only forty-five minutes, and if you allow time for taking off clothes, making some phony gesture of affection, having a bit of banal conversation and getting dressed again, the amount of time spent actually having sex is about eleven minutes.

Eleven minutes. The world revolved around something that only took eleven minutes.’

-Paulo Coelho, Eleven Minutes

you know what would totally be a close to orgasmic experience is if i can finish this book in eleven minutes. unfortunately, i’m way off the mark. i have started reading this book over a month ago but i haven’t even made it halfway through. currently, i’m also reading h. murakami’s kafka on the shore and i’m so intrigued by its plot and characters that i can’t even spend eleven minutes of my time on coelho’s book.

truth be told, i am not a fan of coelho. of his five books which i own, i have only finished reading 2 so far. a few close friends of mine were raving about the alchemist when i decided to check for myself what the fuss was about. after reading the novel, i thought that it was comparable to antoine de saint-exupery’s the little prince as both books’ main characters were involved in a journey of self-discovery. but the little prince touched me far more than the alchemist in more ways than one. the zahir was the second coelho book that i finished. i couldn’t resist its pink front cover and although it was a drag, i managed to get to the last page which was a feat considering that lula, my friend who is a self-confessed coelho fan only read a few chapters of it before she returned my book and admitting that she didn’t like it. i have  begun veronika decides to die and by the river piedra, i sat down and cry but i thought they were too dogmatic for my own liking so i put the books down and looked for other reading materials. i think this is why i am not too fond of coelho. i view his books as tediously didactic in style such that the profundity of his works gives me claustrophobia of some sort. it feels like listening to a self-righteous religious person giving unsolicited advice, or hearing santino talk in may bukas pa. heaven forbid! this is also how i felt with mitch albom’s tuesdays with morrie so i’m not into it as much as i know other people are. of course, people who love coelho (and albom) can argue otherwise. i prefer the style of robert fulghum. he talks about life values and lessons even in the most trivial of experiences but it’s something that we inculcate because they are practicable on a daily basis.

the first few chapters of eleven minutes hooked me until the main character starts seeing an image akin to virgin mary. that’s when i got turned off. still though, i would like to finish eleven minutes if only to see if there is enough love in the book to make the eleven minute-ritual last more than the average. and if i can gather enough love for coelho even for a short span of time.

i’ve always been fascinated with the concept of past life so imagine my surprise when i chatted with aki a month ago. she said that a psychic in japan told her that she and i were twin sisters in 16th century spain. i swear i got chills right when she said that and i told her that i can absolutely believe the psychic. i have written about aki on a few occasions here in my blog. she was my roommate in NY who shared the same birthday as mine. i barely knew her when i agreed to have her rent a room in our apartment. in fact, i had never met her when i did. raj, who was aki’s boss at that time, introduced me to her. but we hit it off instantly like long lost friends. or twin sisters, as the psychic said.

this was probably one of the reasons why i was drawn to japan, even at an early age. now that i have come to think of it, maybe the bonds of my past were urging me to find my sister. naturally, i told aki this. in response, she said that this past life could also be the reason why she was eager to learn spanish language. i told aki that the philippines was under spain in the 16th century. i was perhaps a cruel senorita who shamelessly called the natives ‘indios’ and so i was born one in my next life. i am a living testimony of karma. coincidentally, we have another friend and co-worker who we both met in NY and who was inseparable with us. her name is lula and she was born in paraguay, a native spanish speaker. i asked aki if the psychic told her something about lula’s role in her past life. aki said the psychic didn’t say anything but perhaps, she may be our servant. i laughed at the idea but did not dismiss it completely. after all, servant or not, she may have been a part of our past too.

*****

it’s all so romantic to me when twin flames or soulmates find each other in the next life to continue what they have had or what not. it is for this reason that the movie ’somewhere in time’ has touched me. once i even tried to submerge myself in intense meditation in the hope of transporting myself back to the past. of course, i failed because i had such limited attention span. nonetheless, it did not hinder me from wanting to know what i was and what i had become. but i am not the type of believer who seeks truth from medical journals or academic discourse. it is enough for me to strongly believe in my own cosmic connection with other people i know and feel are part of my past lives.

for instance, when i first saw raj in our film 100 class in college, i thought i knew him from way before although that was the first class we took together. later on, i would remember him from a dream when i was about 10 years old. he was that chinese (or japanese) looking boy that figured so prominently in my dream and he was just an image back then. (i also wrote this on a previous entry.) now i wonder if unconsciously, there was at some point when we were kids that our paths crossed that led me to the dream. like maybe he was the boy who stood inches from me while watching the COD display one december night (it’s possible since we both saw it when we were kids). or maybe fate has its own way of reminding us of our own past and letting us foresee our future through dreams.

i have also dreamt before that i was a filipina in love with a japanese soldier during world war 2. the soldier appeared blurry in my dream but i knew instantly when i woke up that raj was the japanese soldier. and for whatever reason, death i suppose, we never had the chance to fulfill our destiny. and so once more here in our next lives, we meet again.

i can tell a dozen more stories about my cosmic connection with raj but it wouldn’t matter to anyone who reads this as much as it would to me. it may all sound crazy and cheesy to many and yet. i believe.

two halves of the same soul, together in life’s journey.

*****

so far, the stories above has led me to believe that i was a spanish and a filipino in my past lives. but i also truly feel that somewhere in between or prior to my 16th century reincarnation, i was also an animal circus trainer (yes, i’m like the ring leader, i call the shots) and a dancer. but regardless, i strive to be a better person in this lifetime so i will become greater in the next. i have yet to transcend, i think i have been born a filipino twice already which probably means i still have to pay for my previous sins. oh karma!

santa barbara wildfires. yet again.

santa barbara is a place that holds many wonderful memories in my heart so the news alarms me as much as a local resident. and even more, it inspired me to write, finally, about our home in santa barbara

we first arrived in santa barbara in mid-january of 2007. the sunny weather that welcomed us was a relief from the winter wonderland that was NY where we came from. my first impression was it was very much like hawaii – the sunshine, the cool breeze, the mountains, the seas, even the smell of the cab’s freshener reminded me of my mom’s car back in hawaii

although we were billeted at extended stay hotel for a month which my company paid for, raj went right straight to the business of apartment hunting. he browsed all the ads; made the calls and the appointmens, and the initial visits. we knew early on that the quest for the perfect apartment might prove difficult because of budget constraints. we were told that the average one bedroom apartment in santa barbara cost about 1200-1500 USD. and for a starting couple like us, that seemed a bit too much. i was therefore ready to settle for less

on our second weekend in santa barbara, raj took me to the apartments that passed the initial screening. the very first apartment i saw, it was love at first sight. right from when i first stepped into the gate of the complex. i was welcomed by the landscaped small and yet beautiful garden placed aesthetically in the middle of all the apartment units. there were a few benches surrounding the garden (one of which was directly across our unit which made it perfect for reading). there was a small patio by the back gate with cozy poolside lounge chairs where residents can sun bathe, or simply relax and unwind whenever they wanted. it felt like stepping into the set of melrose place, only it was very real for us

the vacany was in unit no. 8. it being my favorite number, i took it as a divine omen. the inside of the apartment made me fall in love with it even more. it was a one-bedroom apartment . both the living room and the bedroom were spacious enough. the bedroom had two large windows overlooking the mountains. the kitchen was fully furnished with a small counter. even the most trivial of detail such as the food grinder in the sink sold the place to me. adjacent to the kitchen was the dining area which could hold up to four people. the bathroom although full was constricted to my liking. but still, this did not deter me from declaring outright that it was the perfect place for raj and me. the price, which was 1115 USD, fit exactly into our budget. we were also only required to pay the security deposit which was half of the monthly rent, unlike most apartments which asked for a deposit equivalent to the monthly rent or even more, as well for the last month payment. on top of it all, the bus stop was just across the street, so the commute was convenient.

raj said that i shouldn’t make the choice based on that apartment alone; i should still see the rest that he marked on. and thus continued the quest for our apartment shopping, even though i was fairly certain that nothing could top the first one we saw. the second apartment we looked at was only a few blocks away from the first one. it was also a one bedroom apartment. the floor area was pretty decent too. but the major turn off was it was across the cemetery, and i mean directly across that when i looked outside the window of the living room (or was it the bedroom), i saw the grave yard. yaiiks! i did not fancy a night of the living dead happening right before my eyes so rejecting this apartment was pretty easy

the third apartment we saw was also a few blocks away. the apartment unit was on the second floor. there was no elevator so naturally, our first thought was how are we going to bring all our stuff up to the apartment. the floor area was smaller compared to the first two. another downside was that the bathroom was in the lone bedroom which made the place not visitor-friendly at all.

after 3 apartments, i decided to give up the apartment hunting. after all, i thought we got lucky finding the perfect place. i stood as the broker of the first apartment like a seasoned pro until raj finally consented. we signed the application forms and hoped that there were no other applicants. a couple of days later, we got the call from the apartment manager informing us that the apartment was ours to lease. the same night, we signed all the documents and paid the deposit. a few more days later, we started moving in our things

up to this day, i never have had any regrets picking the place. i know my instincts were right. what makes it even more special is that is the very first apartment that raj and i had as a married couple, without other people living with us. the apartment was our threshold to independence and to a joint life of adulthood. it gave us a fresh start, something that when we tell our kids about in the future, we will look back with great fondness

this is the story of our first home.

BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here.

i am proud to say that i am above the status quo. woot, woot. 19 out of 100. it’s still disappointing for someone who calls herself a book whore. but i don’t know this list’s criteria because some of the books are oddly chosen, in my honest opinion, like lovely bones (or am i the only person who hates the book?) and bridget jones’s diary (isn’t it a chick lit?). kazuo ishiguro over haruki murukami. i haven’t read the remains of the day, yes but murukami’s norwegian wood deserve a spot there. and no paulo coelho’s? i would have also included angela’s ashes and extremely cloud and incredibly close. but whatever, it’s not my list. this is just a proof that i still have much to read, so help me god.

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 The Complete Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot reading
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky – sinusubukan pa rin…
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck – i will read this.
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia Series – CS Lewis
34 Emma – Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres Mais
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce
76 The Inferno – Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert – want to.
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

this is one of those days when i wish i was back in my homeland. and why not? they have a loooong weekend in observance of the holy week.

i found this ironic because i dreaded holy week when i was younger even though i was born and raised a catholic and therefore, i understand (or should have understood) better what lent signifies for us. but then again, i am sinful and so i see not only what is but also what is not:

- no meat. this was the ultimate sacrifice for me. i’m not fond of sea food (except sushi and it was of course rare where i grew up) nor vegetables so i had to find other means to feed myself. fortunately, my parents never imposed fasting and abstinence in our house so i just stacked up junk foods.

- no TV, or at least the regular programming was off from maundy thursday until black staurday. the only programs we could watch were religious shows like ten commandments, the film about christ’s passion (not by mel gibson), fr. sonny’s seven last words special with dramatization, our lady of lourdes apparation, and 7th heaven marathon (which came only years later). in truth, i wasn’t a TV junkie when i was young and yet i felt like holy week was taking away the one source of pleasure that was readily available to me (which was exactly the point of it all).

- no bathing after 3pm on good friday. i am not sure where this tradition originated from but since holy week usually fell at the peak of summer in manila, bathing was a necessity. i just made sure i took a bath before 3pm in keeping the faith.

- no clipping fingernails and toe nails on good friday. this was something that my elder sister told me but i did not question the wisdom of her age. in any case, clipping can wait since i never had broken nails on a good friday. plus no one ever said biting one’s nails was also forbidden.

- no loud noises. like no singing at the top of your lungs; no shouting; no playing the drums (well i don’t play the drums anyway but i would have wanted to if i could). in short, we were quiet as a mouse. and i hate mouse, much more to be like one.

- no complaints. i remember when i was in first grade, my mom and my auntie pia took my sister and me to antipolo for the station of the cross and i hated all the walking and climbing up the stairs. but of course, i had to refrain myself from kvetching lest i be accused of unbecoming a catholic. my silence and obedience paid off in the end because my mom bought me the most delicious kalamay i have ever tasted in my life (and to this day, i still long for its taste). i don’t think we ever did station of the cross again, or it’s possible that i may have declined to go again.

- no jesus. he’s dead until easter sunday and this scared me like hell. no pun intended. i was pretty sure the ghosts and monsters were everywhere, fearless in the absence of jesus. i suppose i took seriously that third episode of shake, rattle ‘n roll, haha. for your information, that was the story of how a manananggal terrorized a small town on a good friday.

raj egged me to sign up for twitter and i said yes on the condition that he would update my status for me. that was two days ago. today, i found myself exploring twitter and updating my own status. twice already and i’m giddy to make another one soon. i know twitter is suppose to keep your friends updated on what you are doing as often as you could. but i don’t really have any followers on my account except my loyal fans, aka husband and sister and yet, i’m slowly being sucked in the twitter world. as if friendster and facebook are not enough to keep me entertained.

i opened my friendster account on october 2006. again, it was raj who asked me to do so. he said it was a good way of staying connecting with family and friends and finding old ones whom we lost in touch with since we were in japan at that time. and it didn’t disappoint. friendster became an amusing hobby; another venue to communicate with friends, old and new. i found my almost forgotten childhood and high school acquaintances and friends. i re-connected with people that used to be part of my life. i was able to keep track of events that transpired in their lives i wouldn’t have known otherwise. through friendster, i was able to compare my life with others’; envy and yet be happy with their successess; or, rejoice in their failures (insert evil laugh here). in other words, i stalked people through friendster.

the thing i liked most about friendster was that when it was new, people wrote about testimonials to each other. it was a great opportunity to tell other people how wonderful someone is. and for a narcissistic person that i was, that feature was akin to chicken soup for the soul. yes indeed. but in all fairness to me, i did write a lot of testimonials for other people too without being forced to. now, the testimonials have been replaced with comments, much to my dismay, in keeping up with myspace and facebook. what’s worse, there has been a lot of hacking going on which enables posers to send lewd graphic messages or junk emails. having said that, i don’t go to friendster that much anymore. i have moved on to facebook where the population is more diverse on an international scale. friendster, on the other hand is dominated by the filipinos as myspace is to americans.

i opened a facebook account a year and a half ago through an invitation sent by my former boss delphine. through facebook, i am able to connect with both filipino and international friends, officemates and family members living in and out of the country. now, i can stay in touch with them and keep track of their lives with a brief message on their wall, a comment in their picture or a virtual poke every now and then. unlike friendster, keeping a facebook account is not merely an amusing hobby that i partake, it is a necessity in this age and in this world where international borders are being crossed, physically or otherwise.

but facebook does not only prove how small the world is or that we all live in six degrees of separation. the other social networks can attest to that too. the best thing about facebook, for me is that it embodies the concept of global village, or at least that is how it appears to be in my case. for instance, i know when my filipino friend mel who now resides in singapore, is up to start her day despite the time and geographical difference, thru her status update in facebook because she is one of those many people who constantly updates it. i also know that my sister spent time playing ‘word challenge’ to beat my record when she was supposed to write her thesis. now she’s on top of the leader board while i moved to the third spot after jennie who is currently in canada. several other friends from other parts of the world play the same game and i know from the scores who’s doing well. another example would by my colleague stephanie who went on a business trip in brazil a couple of weeks ago. i know that she combined business and pleasure from the pictures she posted and that she got stuck in sao paulo for a night before finally making it home. small, random things you would never have learned if not for facebook.

indeed, our lives are now an open book. thanks to facebook.