A quiet chat

Do you remember ICQ and MSN and Yahoo messenger and GTalk?

I used to use several of these, because different friends had different addresses and preferred the look-and-feel of a particular one. And then people started shifting to Orkut and FB and Twitter and Whatsapp and Viber and Snapchat.

It slowly got lonelier and lonelier.  After all, in this always-connected world, who needs those old IM platforms when the smartphone apps are so much better? (Well, people who don't use smartphones, for one!) 

I still use one of the old ones, mostly for work.  Till not so very long ago, there used to be a regular flow of friends on it.  But slowly slowly, the logged-in list has been growing shorter and shorter, till now it's only populated by those who know it's the best way to reach me for conversations (when they can't talk, of course).

I guess the reasoning is not without logic - why bother to log in on multiple platforms when nearly everybody is on the two-three big ones? And for those who aren't, well, tough. In a world where we have too many friends in too many places and too little time, a few are bound to slip through the crack, right? And if they do, and you don't really miss them, then obviously they didn't matter to you that much, yes?

Whatever. All I know is that I have to continually log on to bloody FB to keep tabs on my friends. 

And let's not even get started about emails. 

Happiness Index

Everywhere I turn, there seems to be a new Index to measure how happy you are. None of them seem quite right, though.  So, after much thought (this afternoon), I came up with the Chai-Toast-Book Happiness index.

The index is mapped using the quality of three variables - a cup of chai, a butter-cheese toast, and the book being read. Bas. One was so happy at having invented this.

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Of course, as you may have surmised already, I then realised the value of each factor itself depends upon several variables.  To wit:

the blend of tea being used and the proportion of leaf to dust;
the kind of milk available (skimmed, semi-skimmed, full-fat, extra-creamy, dairy-free);
whether the milk was environmentally packed (pouch or bottle or carton);
how confident I am that the milk has not been adulterated or contaminated;

whether the sugar is sulphur-free;

is there was enough lemongrass and ginger and mint to hand;

is the bread is healthy-grain;
is the flour is organic;
what sort of cheese is being used;
has it had a proper cold-storage history;

what genre of book was it;
was it an easily-holdable paperback or a big, heavy, slipping-from-finger hardback;
was it a comforting re-read or a gripping new one or just something to do TP with;
was it bought new (thus paying royalties to the author and indirectly encouraging them to write more) or secondhand (thus helping the recycling movement and some poor vendor);

what time of the day was this activity being undertaken in;
was the weather all monsoon-y and wistful or was it spring-y and sprightly or was it cold and snuggle-inducing;
were all three being ingested sprawled on a couch or lounging in bed or out in a park;
what was the likelihood that somebody would call or ring the bell in the middle of this activity.

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I stopped making the list about then.  So much complexity for something so seemingly simple.  Not so happy now, I can tell you.

Friday Fun: Fact/Fiction

Sometimes, at random occasions (always when I'm alone), I find myself wistfully going om nom nom. 

Just because the interwebz discarded you for other fancies doesn't mean you aren't still fun, little poppet. Who's a little wunnerful meme? Who's a perfectly lovely mouthful? Who? Thaaaat's right. Om nom nom nom nom.

Hidden deaths

There's a dead wasp on the path. Ants swarming round, calling in reinforcements till they successfully begin to lift-drag it away.  I wonder if it died, fell and was then discovered, or if it was got injured and fluttering on the ground, got pounced upon by this army.

I realise I don't know how long wasps live, or how they die if fortunate to live their entire lifetime. Do they just stop breathing (how do they breathe)? Do they just stop and settle down somewhere, waiting as their vitality drains away? Or do they submit to the hive-mind, surrendering their bodies for the little nutritional value; one last task for the good of all? 

I look around, and I see butterflies and birds and little flies brought by the heat.  I see them everyday, and when they flit off, I dismiss them.  Show's over, see you again tomorrow.

But where do they go? Do you butterflies group together in a bush at night? Do flies have hives or nests? Are these the same ones I saw yesterday, or are those all just so much fodder by now?  And if they are mulch, did they topple over, or did they just stop and fall mid-air?

I keep thinking I've read all of this somewhere before, but I realise that I don't really know, and am merely trying to convince myself. And I realise that where once I would have rushed off to learn about such new things, today I insist that if I just spent enough time reflecting, all this information would be dredged up from whatever deep recess it had been stored in. 

I try not to even think about the fact that I haven't even thought about these things. Or why.

The thought of my curiousity dying scares me more thoroughly than the prospect of my own death.

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All the dead wasps I've ever seen have been curled up, like a newborn baby.  One position, two diametrically opposite stages of existence.

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So much to know. So much to known about what to know, what there is to know. 

Unreasoned

I have taken to hiding every single pop-up recommend, trend, suggested reading, additional reading, feedback request, and quick survey that happens across my browser. 

Without offering any reason why*.

I do it in the faint hope that somewhere, a data-sucking, ad-misselling, clickbait-creating algorithm writer will end up screaming in frustration because at the lack of information.

And if they do factor such null value in as well, I keep hoping it will result in fewer such messages cluttering up my view.

Either way, win-win.



* No, not even 'Other'.