The Virtual Life

Have you ever been, or post at Discussion Forum? You know, those forum board where people posts and then others response with their post and a whole shebang of on-line discussion going on?

I have a, what you may call, a fav "forum hangouts" that I frequent everyday to post and engage in light banter with other forumers. It was like a community, a virtual "hood", people bond and talk and jive and occasionally do some rough ribbing here and there. It is like a microcosm of community, a virtual one though, but as alive and as exciting and....this is the kicker... as SILLY as a what you can expect of a REAL community. Thats where the problem start. People get personal and malicious and back-stab like how they would in real life, this time, of course much easier since everyone is masked in their own veil of anonymity.

There is even one particular poster, one who fashioned himself to be a vampire, who, despite having revealed his true age to be somewhere at the tail-end of one's natural life, is a perfect example of someone who take life in a virtual community too seriously (prompting other forumers to think that he had no REAL life). He post almost, at average 10 posts everyday. The only sad thing about him is that his paranoia sometimes get the better of him and he really gets jealous when other forumers appears BETTER than him in term of popularity and posting. I thought he was a friend, and I tot I saw some good in him....but recently he 'back-stabbed" me and abuse my trust. I am so, very disappointed. Or have I too, get sucked into the silliness of this virtual world?

STORM

Went to the rooftop to take some fresh air (down below, deep in the bowels of the building where I spend 8 hours everyday is my office, windowless, lifeless, dead) and snapped this pics of a very angry and pregnant cumulonimbus about to burst on Changi Airport control tower.

Nice cool, strong steady wind perks me up a little, but the foreboding storm seems totally apt to the dysphoric mood I was about to settle in.

Dysphoria

My abilty to create files and folders far outstrip my abilty to organised them. My 'puter is like someone else's scrapyard. Ditto with my email inbox. Am already getting warning for exceeding the allocated quota of storage space. Can I help it if I am hardworking?

Am realising that work is overly dependent on this workstation. Thats not healthy. But it seems that THAT is the only way to stay connected without having to really CONNECT to someone else. I mean, you don't have to suppress and hide all that emotions when you reply their emails asking for stupid silly info which, you and I know, can be gotten easier via the phone. But THAT will mean hearing real voices, and behind that voices are real people with real feeling. Now who would want to CONNECT to THAT?

Am still struggling with the dilemma re the new 5-days work scheme. Work extra half-hour everyday and come in to work one Saturday every 4 weeks or status quo? Why do we need to come in and work one Saturday in a 4-weeks cycle? Boss, "Oh, we have to ensure that the Service Level we provide does not, in any way, degrade or lowered due to the changing work hours". Shite.

Walking....

“Above all, do not lose your desire to walk: every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness; I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it. . .but by sitting still, and the more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill. . . Thus if one just keeps on walking, everything will be alright.”

Søren Kierkegaard, letter to Jette (1847)>

--- found on a bathroom wall.