social interaction.

What the hell happened to this month?

How is it already the end of February?

I don't know what happened and I don't know what I have been doing with my time or my life for that matter, but its going fast.

All I can say is this. I've been hiding.

But I really can't. Because of the Internet. Prime example: this blog post. =)

I mean, what would we do without the Internet? I was seriously considering just completely "unplugging" myself from it. In fact, I've been trying to get off the crack they call Facebook. I'm so close to just removing any access I have to it, be it my phone or bookmarks on my computer. (IMHO, they're going to sell all your information on there at some point, so don't know why people think is so 'social.' I don't buy there BS, sorry.)

I mean, it was so cool at first, connecting to people, old friends, childhood classmates, but it can also be annoying. You can really tell the people that crave so much attention. Its the people that post their status updates every hour, or the ones that leave you hanging and fish for people to respond to their status update that sometimes I feel they just need some good ol' fashion attention. But you know what, I still read it and give em' just that. Cuz I'm a sucka.

What happens eventually is that people post status updates, and then their friends reply to them. That's the social interaction. A few words here and there, and you are pretty much caught up with a bunch of people in your network.

Now let's look at this from a bigger perspective.

Remember snail mail? The historic pastime when people use to write a letter to each other, and you would have to put a stamp on it, go to the mailbox, and physically mail it? Of course, you couldn't just write a "status update", 10 words or less, on a piece of paper and mail that. No way, that wouldn't be worth it. You had to give a bit of time and make an effort! It wasn't easy as typing a few words and pressing enter. In fact, Facebook even writes your name for you. You just have to fill in the rest in 3rd person.

Then came email. Now I love email. In fact, I actually miss it. No one emails anyone anymore. From a social perspective at least. You know why? Because this thing called "The Wall" on Facebook. See, that's even worse. People are so lazy that they don't even have time to send even emails anymore. They just post on each other's wall or respond to status messages. Granted, I'm not complaining. In fact, sometimes, if people write on my wall, I actually write on their wall too. I'm lazy and you don't even have to write that much. In fact, have you ever seen anyone write a long letter when posting to a Facebook wall? Hell no!

But what's annoying about that? The whole world sees it. (Well, obviously you can set your privacy settings and all that, but that's besides the point.) So sometimes I resort to even sending them a private message because I don't want the whole world to see what I'm up too!

So you can see the natural progression.
Snail Mail -> Email -> Wall post -> Status Update -> Status Update Response.

More frequent, interaction, high convenience factor, but less words, and less personable.

Sad isn't it.

In fact, I'll actually challenge myself. For any readers out there and wants to know what's really going on with me, email me your physical home address. And I'll write you back personally, in ink, and I will put it in an envelope, and mail it to you with UK stamps. Or in fact, as a challenge to yourself, ask my for my UK address, mail me a physical letter about what's going on with you, and I'll physically right you back as soon as I can. Personally I don't think its going to happen because its just way to much effort and far to inconvenient. (You know how long the Post Office queues are! So damn busy.) I admit it, it will be hard for me on my end to actually do this. I can't even update this damn blog!

Au revoir.

Snow Day!

From the BBC website:

The worst snowfalls to affect Britain in 18 years has led to school and road closures, disrupted rail services and hundreds of flight cancellations.

I've been here for almost 4 years and I've never seen snow like this in London. Ironically, this wouldn't be that bad in Chicago. The big difference between Chicago and London? No infrastructure!

Typically when I experienced this much snow in Chicago, my ears are usually graced with the sound of shovels grinding against the pavement, snow blowers running up and down residential driveways, and snow plow trucks trudging through the streets. The roads and sidewalks are eventually cleaned and salted, and things get back to normal.

But here, complete silence. Not much shoveling. No snow plow trucks. The street and sidewalks are an utter mess.

The closest thing to a shovel I saw this morning was a man using a sweeper upside down to scrape off snow on the sidewalk. Speaking of sidewalks, nothing is shoveled. Pedestrian feet create a beaten path to take the place of a snow blower.

The city completely shuts down. No buses, the trains are suspended, and no one can fly in and out. London is completely paralyzed.

But this didn't stop the cyclists! I was walking to work this morning and I spied multiple people crazy enough to ride their bikes in the snow, including a fellow colleague. Now that's something you wouldn't see in Chicago!

The best part of all this? I got to go home early!