My Dad wrote a comment in my blog in response to a suggestion by me that they weren’t interested enough to use my website for stuff (the way I made the suggestion did sound a little harsh in retrospect)…
It is not that we are not interested – it is just that we have far better things to do with our time. You know, like relating to people in real time! Yeah, OK, it’s old fashioned, but…
When I said they were not interested, it was more a reflection in the amount of time they had available to pursue this. What I should have said was that they were not interested at this point in time because of too many other commitments – that is what I meant.
The comment about relating to people in real time is an interesting one though. Relating to people in real time does become a bit of a challenge when you have friends in about 12 different timezones, and when the bulk of your friends live in a different state or country than you do !
My parents live in Murray Bridge, South Australia. They have lots of friends in the town and in the surrounding area. Chatting to someone over a cup of tea, or on the phone is the way they do things – as do most people in this world I guess.
I do enjoy getting together with my friends for a drink or dinner, or just for a chat, but I seem to have developed friendships with a lot of people who do not live in Sydney – and so keeping in touch with them is a challenge. Even keeping in touch with my friends in Sydney is a challenge when I spend so much time not actually in Sydney !
I could call them on the phone, however, timezones often pose a problem for some of my friends – so real time communication can be problematic. I have quite a few friends who congregate online in a property investment chatroom using internet relay chat (IRC) – this is a great way to keep in touch because if they are in the room – regardless of the time of day or night – you know they are able to be communicated with. When I am overseas and in a completely different timezone, I can log in to the chatroom and potentially chat to some of my friends.
However, what about my other friends who don’t hang out in that chatroom ? I can’t call them easily, I can’t meet them for coffee or dinner easily, I’m not likely to write letters or even emails to them individually on anything that resembles a regular basis – so how do I keep in touch with them effectively ? How do I let them be part of my life when relating to them in real time is so difficult ? The only time some of my friends and family get a glimpse into what I’ve been doing is in my annual Christmas letter.
What I have found with my blog is that I can let people into my life in a much more intimate way – without them needing to be communicating in real time and without any borders or boundaries. I am writing this while in Korea – I’m not about to spend hours on the phone chatting to my friends while I am here, but I can connect to the internet and post blog entries without any problems.
Writing in my blog is nowhere near as personal as dinner, a phone call, or even a letter or email. It is also not as fun or intimate as real time communication. However, what I can do is write about what I am doing and about things that interest me in a more general way – so my friends and family can read about it. Then when I do talk to people or write to them, I can concentrate on the more personal details without needing to fill in all the generic stuff about what I’ve been doing. This means I can spend less time talking about myself and what I have been doing and more time on relating to other people and discussing things of mutual interest.
The only drawback comes when I do finally get to chat to someone and I ask them “can I tell you about my trip to Korea”, and they say “nah, I read about it already in your blog” :D
Very deep, Dad. :D
Interesting thought.
Your parents are more up to date now that we have started reading your blog a few times.
Rose said she should start a blog of her own so that you can keep up with what she is doing.
My thought is this: if I start my own blog, would I be able to keep up with what I am doing???? You know, something like a retrospective planning diary. Let me explain, it’s like planning in reverse, making a list of things you should have done if you’d only had the foresight to know what you should have known but were too lazy or busy to think through all the issues. Mmmm, I’m not making much sense am I?
Second thought: this is far to philosophical to be thinking about with a heavy head cold. All that paracetomol is fuzzying my mind. Just been reading in a book though that fuzzy thinking is the post-modern way to go. (“Soul Tsunami” by Dr. Leonard Sweet)
Hey, this thing is only 1.5cm thick and weighs less than 2kg – you can’t have everything ! Portability and strength are very important too – titanium alloy chassis. If I wanted a 15″ screen it would add 20-25% more to the weight.
While working from home I use the dual-monitor support on the ThinkPad to extend my desktop to my 17″ 1280×1024 IBM ThinkVision L170P flat panel display – so I get a massive amount of screen realestate. And I can quickly switch the external display back and forth between my extended desktop and my desktop PC which is using the DVI port on the monitor.
fourteen inch screen? The tragedy!
Rose wrote:
Well there’s an idea ? Why don’t you ? :D
All you need to do is ask, and I’ll have your blog ready before you can say “one point five gigahertz pentium-m processor with one and a half gigabytes of ram, centrino wireless, gigabit ethernet, forty gigabyte fifty-four-hundred r-p-m hard drive, fourteen inch screen with ten-twenty-four by seven-sixty-eight resolution and built in cd-r-w-dvd-combo drive, love my thinkpad t-forty”
Maybe I should start blogging too, so that you know what I’M doing… (!?)
Sweety, now that you’ve started blogging, I know waaaaay more about what you’re up to than I ever did before (you really should phone your sister more often you know…)