Being away

(This post is inspired by my friend's twitter messages where I get all the ideas from. I am trying to fire-up a NaNoWriMo entry by getting prompts from it.)

I just woke up this 2nd of November. Everything is generally ok. I logged on to twitter and saw contacts giving their usual good mornings. Well, there's nothing outstanding on this day yet. I guess they are just used to that routine of telling the world that "Hey! I exist!"

I opened my e-mail and Facebook and check my usual messages. Also look at Warbook, Vampires, and if there's enough strength left, fight back or beat up other heroes. Being able to fight back and succeed against those who attacked you first gives this sense of pride. Silly isn't it? Although I'm very tempted to uninstall these applications. They can't hurt your game character if you don't exist anymore right? Not to mention that they can waste your time as well.

It is great to see people flock social networking sites more than porn. I have a no porn policy at home. Yes, I'm very demanding but also because I have young boys and girls in the family. Also, in Feng Shui, having a women painting or poster is bad luck for couples or partners.

Christmas season is fast coming. This year's Christmas is not going to be that exciting. Moving in to a new country, means being away from family and friends. Of course, thanks to the Internet I can still keep in touch but I miss the texting and meet up days for a great Italiannis lunch and Starbucks coffee.

I wonder what's the fuss for Christmas this year. Of course, there's the election in Australia and never-ending political scandals in the Philippines. Although life is too short to spend my day worrying about it.

Thinking of what Christmas gifts to give can be a pain sometime. I wonder if a Frank Sinatra CD or a music cd with cheesy and mushy love songs will be a click to old relatives and friends. For the kids, perhaps a 5x5 rubic's cube can be an interesting gift. For the girls, I thought of giving them 2008 predictions and some of the bead jewelry that I've made in the past.

Being away gives this kind of pressure and makes you think of the things that you should be thankful for. At least I'm spared from the blogging and IT jungle that I normally feel back in the Philippines. I still believe that in life, there are no permanent friends but permanent interest. Although we could co-exist in a civilized manner but there's still that lingering thought that some might be collaborating to take me down. Unless of course, I take them down first.

I activated my mobile phone roaming although I usually turn it on most of the time to avoid being swamped by calls . Not to mention the bills and the credits taken away from my prepaid mobile phone. I wish that all applications, Gmail, Facebook, Friendster, Yahoo will have text messaging programs that can be used to keep in touch with friends. Or even a site where you can manage your Friendster, MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Ecademy and other social networking programs. That should look very interesting.

Online friendships

Just an update, the following blogs were added to Ratified Australia

• http://redsultana.com/
• http://2blogornot2blog.wordpress.com
• http://www.duncans.tv

One of the things I enjoy that has driven me to partner with Ratified Australia is being able to keep myself posted on the latest in the blogosphere. Here are some stuff I saw lately:

• There's an article at Imaginif on children learn the cycle of violence from our parenting. I believe every parent desires to be a good one. My worry on that article piece is that the writer may insinuate that he or she is a perfect parent and may alienate readers in getting the message across. Of course, reading it as compared to how it gets presented is different. Perhaps I'm missing some emphatic voice in it. Will have to re-read that sometime again.
  
• Suzie made a post about the Carnivals of Australia. It seems my submission missed the deadline. =( However, the format of the upcoming Australian Blogging Conference gave me an idea on how to improve similar events I organize back home.
• SwollenPickles gave a preview on how the Audi A4 looks like. I wonder if that car feels like a BMW inside. I guess from a passenger point of view, they all feel the same.
  
• Over the weekend, we get to see some birds and I find myself lost in telling the kids what kind they are. Good thing there's Bird Anonymous that helped me in identifying them. I only wish that I'll be successful in taking their pictures next time.
• I just learned from Haalo that there's this presto pasta night and I am thinking of sharing a Filipino style pasta soon.

Stephen made an interesting post about online friendship. I believe that the Internet has allowed us to increase our circle of contacts even more. Depending on our kind of work, some of us will get exposed to a lot of people and keeping up will be hard. I feel kinda bad whenever I receive an e-mail from someone saying they met me years ago and it is likely that I don't remember them anymore. In fact, most of the time, such is true.

When tools like LinkedIn came out, I invited members of my mailing list so I can put a face behind the e-mail addresses. Also in events where I speak, I invite those I met just to keep me posted on their movements. I have at least ten ways of using LinkedIn.

Before Facebook became popular, I'm already using Friendster and use that to monitor friends birthday, announce events once in awhile, and observe what my kids and their friends are up to. ;)

Last April, I also started using Twitter out of curiosity. Definitely, that tool became very important when blog wars started happening in my part of the world.