Managing life in the Internet era

Friends are those who enjoy being with us. Out of them, there are special friends who enjoy being with us in both the happy and sad moment. During the days when there were no phones and internet, it was not a hard job to select those few special friends out of the handful of companions. Simple logic, if there are 5 candidates for 3 vacancies, selection is easy for the interviewer.


With the advent of the mobile phones mania to our little island, many had sms friends. They replaced pen pals of the olden days and guess what, these sms pals are more funky than the pen pals who takes months to reply for a snail mail.

Then comes the email, chat rooms and social networking and with them, floods in lot of unseen friend to our lives. Now, the number of friends are not handful but thousands of handfuls. Selecting the best few to be with is a bit difficult task. Lot of people may seem to appear best friends but only lord knows who they are in reality.


But, there are this special buddies you met online, then met in reality and have a good friendship maintained and some although have never seen, continue to be best of friends for a long time.Apart from them, there are school mates and class mates on your chat lists. The third kind of people in most of your lists may be the professional or work crowd. For example, there can be your colleagues at work who chat with you about the present project you are working on. Fourth category is the people you love. May be family or your fiance.

It is always nice to have lot of friends around when you log into skype, Gtalk, Yahoo or facebook for that matter. But how are you going to manage them all? There are hundreds of best buddies online. You do not know what they are up to, you do not know where they are. Thus, having a green bulb next to a name of a buddy does not mean that he or she is ready to chat and similarly, having a red bulb always doesn't mean he/she is not ready to have a chat.


Talking in general, the fourth category and the third catogory are in the top of the list of priorities.

The reason is no other than their importance to your present life. If you do not respond to your GF, she will shout at you and being silent for the professional list is too dare to think of.


But hey, you got to give the others a hearing too. Some times, you are exhausted with work that you postpone some work that you have to do.

For example, when I logged into facebook one day, it said that the next day is going to be the birthday of one of my best buddies. I told my self that I am going to wish him early the next day. The next day comes in, I sit in front of the computer thinking that I have to wish him. In a moment I forget it with the whole load of information/work put in front of my eyes.At the end of the day I turn eyes out of the computer and then only remembers that it was his birthday. I log into the chat using phone, he is no where to be found.

I thought I would SMS, but that too was postponed forever. Later he showed up in the chat list , I tried to say hello and say sorry but he was silent..then yesterday there comes a message saying that I have forgotten his bday and I have forgotten him.

Well, I was helpless. what he says is true. I have forgotten him. I didn't even emailed when he was not replying for chat. I was embarrassed and believe me it was a hurting to get such a message from one of the handful of my best buddies.

True that Internet is helping us to get to know many friends but that is not all, it creates new needs for us and sometimes makes us stranded among the friendships that come along the wires (and for the wi-fi users : over the air.).

The first time I used the internet was to do some research for an English Debate and that day, I thought internet was a great tool for education. The moment I got to know about email, I was crazy sending forward emails to friends. A friend invites me one day to Hi5 and from that day I was not only crazy sending forward emails,reading them but also making new friends. then comes Facebook. (count the numbers everybody, now 3 needs, turn on the computer, read mails, go Hi5ing, see the faces of Facebook and do some research for school work), Then comes chatting, blogging, twittering, stumbling, you tubing, flickering, LinkedIning and a whole lot more.

Its true that they are great services, but still, do you not feel the needs they create? if you create a blog, you feel like monitoring the visitors, so you put up a script in the blog to track them. Than each time you log on, you not only feel like reading the comments of the visitors but to know the countries from where they came and how did they found the link to the blog. The list goes on and so is the day.

We sure can live without those but, "It" sometimes makes us all slaves of the internet and ultimately forget humanity.

Forget it so much that you postpone wishing a person through a call or a SMS because you feel it is better to wish him over the chat which is spontaneous and some times more fun than a phone call.

Or, is it simply due to the over flooding of information? The information updating in real time makes you forget the real life issues ? I do not know what it is. The only thing I understand is that internet is the modern open economy. It provides you with lot of new oportunities and in order to keep up with the world you have to update your selves, sometimes forgetting or rather not not bothering about the old things/ services etc. Frankly, tell me how many of you are missing your old buddies simple because they do not have IM? In my case a lot.

But they do miss you too, specially in the special moments. So make sure at least you give your all buddies in the contact list a missed call once a week. Believe me, it makes both the parties happy or may be end up in a long gossipy call.

Now what if this thing called the internet go brum and bang one day like in the big bang? Well, im going to experience it soon, just got the red bill from the SLT and my dialog bill is too high so that they are sending me SMS from time to time.

So back to the age when there was no phones and no internet. let us see how am I going to choose the best 3 out of 5.

PS: My dear friend( whose birthday falls on 11th of August) , Wish you a happy Birth day. I know this is too late to say it. But still, I couldn't think of a better way to apologize.

Your message in the morning is still waiting in my inbox because I'm not that strong to bear the guilt of not remembering your birth day :(

the bottom line : Take this as a lesson you internet junkies. Computers and internet does not worth a single penny when compared to human beings


Speaking of being addicted to the internet, this what an online quiz said of me.

85% L33T H@x0r (81% - 100%) You live and breathe the Internet. You rarely leave your computer(s) for fear of going through withdrawl. You are beginning to say "lol" and "brb" in verbal conversations and you haven't seen your friends face-to-face in months if you don't count their web cams. Maybe it is time to back away from the computer slowly and go get some fresh air? The Internet will be here when you get back! The Quiz at Quiz Meme!

yes, it sure is the time to back away from the computer slowly and go get some fresh air

See you soon!!