boys :)

confession # 2 : I have the best guy-bestfriends ever.

I grew up with guys. I have no siblings and a lot of the neighborhood kids were boys or at least they were the least girly of girls. And I spent all my time with them (surprise, surprise!). So naturally, I was closest friends with precisely these guys. For reasons I’m yet to discover, I cannot tolerate being friends with girly girls. I know I act like one for most part, but I can’t tolerate their company. So I chose to hang out with guys, because honestly speaking, they’re a lot less to deal with than the everyday tantrums and emotional trauma that typical girls come up with.

So, I’m not sure when this wonderful thought dawned on me, but I have some of the best guy friends on the face of the earth. And I’ve always have interesting relationships with them. We NEVER dated – though there were awkward times when I’ve discussed a prospective relationship with a couple of them. Talk about being awkward! But, more often we’d just sit around discussing the most random subjects one could think of. These guys are there to sit back and watch a game of cricket or football, have a couple of drinks, laugh over stupid things and talk about things that my girly friends would find so frikking odd! They’re the ones who’ll give me a completely honest opinion, about everything, even if it’s something I don’t wanna hear. They’re the ones who talk to my face, not behind my back. They’ll laugh, but they’re totally ok if I wear funny colored pants that look hilarious under a flowery t-shirt. With them, I have had my most memorable thoughts, my most beautiful smiles, my most painful tears, my most irritating tantrums and definitely my most cherished times. And more than anything, they make me smile, laugh my heart out and make my days worth it. Which, btw is the best feeling ever!

I can’t tell how many times I’ve been asked by other people if I’m dating any of them. People even thought I was dating multiple guys at once! I’ve been frustrated so many times at trying to explain to people that I’m just friends with these guys. They eventually shut up, but I never could get around convincing them. And frankly, I don’t give a damn either. I’d rather take this than sit around all day with other typical girls bitching about whose dress sense is pathetic, which color to paint my nails or how huge I’ve grown from eating just one sugar-donut.

And I love how it’s never awkward, not even when topics get a little, for lack of a better term, raunchy. And sometimes they’re so comfortable around me, it’s like they’ve ignored the fact that I’m actually a girl. They always have made me laugh more than a whole lot of other people I’ve met. Anyway, I can’t imagine – and frankly don’t want to even contemplate - life without those guy-girl, non-dating experiences – life without guy friends like mine.

And it’s so annoying, especially when you’re approached by your desi relatives, to be enquired about such relationships. They pretend like they understand, but all they end up doing is to segregate you and lessen your interaction with the opposite sex. It’s upsetting how natural male-female relationships can be perverted through gender segregation. Talk about being conservative! Such restriction, I feel, only increases your desperation to get into a romantic relationship, even if that’s not exactly what you want. Then, the unique brand of joy, of personal growth and of plain old fun that is only available in opposite sex friendships is squeezed out.

But I’ll say this: I have never dreamed of dating any of my guy friends, but I can’t imagine being happy in a future relationship without having experienced life with them or understanding what guys truly are from a friends point of view. My friends have kept me insanely-sane in our very own fun way and I’m glad about our friendship, and our life spent together having all the fun under the sun. :)

I'm A Stalker.

So here is my confession #1:

I wish there was a cooler way to put this, but, I’m a stalker – a facebook stalker. I spend about 1/3rd of my week on facebook and I pretty much ditch a lot of other productive activities for facebooking. Not that I intend to, but it just happens. Why? Because it’s easy and convenient. Facebook is like the common man’s blog – you can post pictures, share videos, comment, stay in touch with friends or have fun “poking” people like I always do. Through facebook, I know what my friends are doing. I even know what my friends’ friends are doing! So, with people updating their status with their life’s happenings every second, you pretty much just get around to staring at people’s profiles all day or trying to figure out what a particular someone is doing. And sometimes, you’d think it’s better than a blog because you have greater publicity and a larger audience – thanks to those facebook updates.

And it doesn’t end there. If I meet someone for the first time today, they’re on my facebook tomorrow. My “friends” (includes pretty much everyone I meet in life) circle keeps increasing. And the next thing I know, I’m stalking them – seeing what they’re up to. Furthermore, by accepting your friend request, these guys pretty much extend to you the same invitation: “come play tag with me”. One advantage (or is that a disadvantage?) to being at home for me is that I’m always about 10 feet within the reach of my laptop. And facebook very kindly (sometimes annoyingly) notifies me every minute of everything my friends do. I can’t help getting excited every time I see a notification. Hey, I’m curious to see what was said in my honor.

It’s one thing to read someone’s blog, appreciate it and leave a comment. But it’s another to stay logged in all day and browse through friends’ profiles, look at their pictures, post on their walls or simply read whatever seems interesting in wall-to-walls. The best part about all this – nobody knows I’m stalking. Or scrolling back in time to see their previous activities. Or looking at friends’ friends profiles through “tagged” pictures. Freaky, how I poke into other people’s business. Does that make me a stalker? I Guess. And it doesn’t look like it’s going to change anytime soon because I haven’t figured out anything better to do.

Does this behavior seem odd to a lot of people? Or is everyone pretty much doing what I am? Are we just flattered by attention (oh yeah, I mean egoistic), assuming everyone is the same as well? And does it really matter? YES. Facebook can be both fascinating and annoying. But either way, it is very addictive. And do we sense a great loss of interpersonal communication here? Because, all people end up doing is talk through facebook, even if they stay 2 blocks away. People (includes me) post personal information, share intimate stuff and wait, idled, for responses from pretty much everyone. Your stalkers know what you're up to, your future employees might gather stuff from your activities, or worse, your desi relatives might figure out stuff happening in your life! This, unfortunately, is the way lives have become since facebook became a part of them. All this said, I’m definitely getting back to facebook right after this. And I’m sure you will too. Nothing has changed, has it? And I bet nothing will.

Ok, but I do have a life! I’m not completely engrossed in everyone else’s life – I’m just enthusiastic about staying in touch and figuring out what most my friends are really up to since I’m so far away from them and it’s hard to get around to all the information! I'm really glad those facebook stalker applications never got around to working! Besides, it also allows for some lazy moments after a tiring day, or so I’d like to think. I’m also beginning to wonder if there is a line that separates social networking and addiction. Because if there is, I’m pretty sure it’s a really thin line.

And yeah! Not to forget - Happy social networking, you guys!

What's in a name?

So! It’s New Year after all! Happy 2010 guys!!! The time when we look back, relive good memories, learn from the bad ones and move on to shinier, happier days! But I do have this curious thought in my head: it is a problem with ordinal numbers, a shortcoming of language that challenges us all. Just what exactly do we call this decade? It was so much simpler back in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s. The decade spanning 2000-2009 came up, people suggested stuff like “the oh’s”, “the naughties” (my personal favorite!), and “the ought’s” (this one was the more accepted idea). But no one really stuck to one term. So, exactly what do we call this decade? Here are some ideas:

THE TENS: when we say 10’s…to a lot people it means the decade of the 1910’s. we could still stick to it, but then a lot of significant stuff happened in the 1910’s (the only thing I remember about that decade is the titanic sinking!) and people don’t wanna confuse the two.

THE TEENS: I wouldn’t say it’s a bad name. But imagine what we’d call the stars or movies (or something along that line) of this decade then? “Movies from the teens”? The term just seems awkward to me.

THE TWENTY TENS: I really like this idea and then someone asked me if that meant that we currently live in the year twenty-o-ten. That just confused me and I’m back on square one. But I still really like the idea.

THE TWEENS: hahaha…sounds really cute to me though.

THE 2nd MILLENNIUM TEENS: I think it's really long for a name and I’m sure people will eventually shorten it to teens again.

THE TWENTEENS: not bad again, but if we were to follow the same trend…what we would call the next decade? The twent-twenties? NoT!

So with all these ideas, I like the twenty tens the best. I'm sure people will come up with a lot more creative ones if they're really asked to think. The previous decade pretty much stayed a nameless one even with some nice ideas. You may ask, ‘so, what’s in a name?’ But given all that has emerged in the past decade, the failure to invent a satisfactory name seems to be a reflection of our sense that the so-called “oughts” were not all that they ought to have been or perhaps much less than they had promised to be. With so much that happened in the past decade, and most of it unforgettable, it just seems to have gone by unnamed, like no one wants to own it. So is this decade set to face the same fate of being an orphaned era? Or will it be named something cool, a name worthy of all that it’s set to bring? Now that, only time will tell.