Are we missing the main picture?

Every single day I, like anybody else wake up to the Facebook notifications and the WhatsApp messages, and ofcourse, after all through the day's checking, sleep with anxiety, checking them again.. I cannot remember the time that I was out of social network for more than a couple of days. Social media has become a part of my lifestyle, today. But at what cost?

We go to a place, say a restaurant, for a reason, many a times for socialising with friends, but the first thing we do? Check in on foursquare, tag the place online, click a picture, most of the times for the world to see it, rather than cherish the special moment itself. Most of the times we are not actually on the moment, experiencing it, we are rather away, lost in  the virtual world. I know quite a many people, who cannot start to eat before clicking and posting for the world to see.

I cant help but remember this thing I read somewhere on the importance of Facebook, whenever this kinda discussion comes up..

A wise man posted online..
- "What do I miss if I dont use facebook?
- "The contact with friends whom you wouldnt have bothered to have contact with, at the first place"

While a smartphone has been able to bridge the gap of oceans across the world, we, unfortunately have happened to become distant from the ones that are right next to us, in the real world. Well, Nokia - Connecting people (for real)?

Atleast ever since the time I came to know about the concept of small talk, I have realized the bare minimal use of it in the world, for we are too immersed looking at our phones, listening to music, barely recognizing the (potential) human connections. Today it is the virtual friends that matter more than the real ones, apparently. Where is it leading us to?

The age-old philosophy of "Humans are constantly craving for Human connections" is slowing changing to "Humans are constantly craving for Internet connection".

And nothing could beat this epic line from the Awesome Fight Club movie!

"The things you own end up owning you" - Fight Club..  

While being indulged in the huge *awesome* virtual world through social media, Are we really missing out on the main picture?


P.S:
One day I came across this particular place, a place with no notifications calling for attention, no friend pinging me. I urge you to take a look at this. And then, ofcourse nothing much happened. I went back to social media. :P

P.P.S: I took more than a week, for me to sit down and publish this simple piece of writing. Thanks to my social media addiction . So that's the whole point, see?

The year that passed and the one ahead

"The most creative times are the ones while you are at an exam or at the bathroom" -Myself

Yeah i really came up with that one, although i know its not good enough to have been stolen from someone i would like to declare it. Well, you wanna know why this quote now? I should take you back to this fact that I think, sing, talk a lot during the bath. weird? Yeah that's how i am. So the idea of writing this post too came up from one of my comtemplating sessions during bath. It all started off while i was wondering how this year could have been passed off doing nothing just like the other years. And then on deeper thinking, i realised i have had fun all through and also the year has been the one for few events in my life, which ofcourse you may not be too curious to know, still i decided to go ahead with this(atleast for myself).

Well i am not really that good at memory, so it may not be from the beginning of the year or in the chronological order also. Also i dont think i can remember my bad/ low times, obviously because our minds register the happy times better than the rest, which we ourselves would like to forgot, but i'm rather happy that there have been not too many of those-kinda incidents.

1. The confusion:

This was(/still is) the period for most of the engineers(of my batch) to start thinking of the answer for the ubiquitous question "Whats next?". Yeah you guessed it right from my usage of the word "ubiquitous" that i gave my GRE and TOEFL. Though it was rather a failure, it was infact #NotSoBad compared to few of my friends. Well, now dont think i'm going to the U.S in few months. No thats not happening even though my family so wanted that to happen.After all the confusions through the year,things are a bit clear now. I am anyway not too fascinated about "going abroad" and all. Its always better to be a mediocre here than a failure there (#DamnThePessimistMe). That's the whole point.

2.My photo on First Page of The Hindu:

Yes, you heard it right. My photo was on the first page of The Hindu's regional edition (ofcourse that's great thing! no? no!!? okay) as a part of an Ad for my University. That particular photo was a bad choice but it ended up in the newspaper. The Ad also appeared in some 7th page of TOI in chennai edition,too. And ofcourse, I was not selected based on the topper's list(just in case u thought so.)

3.The Hostel Life:

The year had been more than "fun" for me. With all those friends around, i never felt like boring, which most of my Chennai friends ask me everytime i meet them. Special mention to those juniors who made it even more memorable with all the HALWA-bringing everytime, Empuzzled-playing-times, short-film-koothu, birthday-bashes and those Nova-and-paati-kadai-eatings.

4.Sleep:

Well, many-a-times we could hear people telling sleep is very important and then i took it up literally. While, the number of hours i end up sleepin per day fascinates people, i used to feel its always better to sleep rather than doing nothing. Such vetty(jobless) i had been.

5.Facebook:

Next to sleep, most time i spent at is facebook. Yeah, i got super-active in the virtual life, while sitting at the same place (before my laptop like i am now) all the time. Atleast, it is an anodyne for vetty guys like me and hence FB. I dunno if I will be able to come out of this addiction, atleast this year. But since i believe addictions are usually replaced by addictions, hopefully the next addiction shall not be worser.

6.The Job:

Well, this was the placements time in my college. You know, it was really fun attending the training, the first interview, seeing your friends getting placed, finally getting placed too. I got placed in an IT company. This takes me to the time when the computer and internet was getting popular i was in my tenth grade or something, when being a software engineer was the coolest thing to be and a great thing, too. And then i started getting interested in computers. That's not the point now, the point is after all these years the craze for the software industry has almost come down and now people are running behind the so called "core job" because almost anyone (without the worst luck) can end up with the IT job these days, as most of us know.

7.Blogging:

Oh yeah! i started to write a tech-blog. Ofcourse its only the daily technology like tips for fb, twitter and other softwares and not my engineering subjects if you thought so. But as it has happened for so many, the microblogging took over blogging. And for a person like me who can sit thoroughout the day in FB but not a few hours with a book ( i mean novel here), I couldnt help but get distracted to other things. Atleast it got me busy for a month or two.

8. The Newly found Love:

Well, before you start thinking something else, let me make this point also clear here, i was and have ended the year (2011) SINGLE (tada..). i dont really regret so much for this except ofcourse for the times when i meet my old friend and he suddenly introduces his girlfriend and think "is it only me?"... or in the road, when a damn hot girl goes with a dumb or atleast dumb-looking guy and then the feeling of i-chose-to-be-so takes over and makes things easy :P

Yeah, coming back to the love that struck me this year and that is "PHOTOGRAPHY". i had come up with this status update sometime back saying - Facebook is the mother of so many photographers and the father of many models. The encouragement u get when u post a good pic on FB or the likes when you change your photo, you know, that is the driving force for so many people. Rather inspired from many of my friends on FB, I am entering this field of photography. It is wonderful and keeps me busy too. I am just a beginner right now and just hope atleast 2012 makes me a better photographer,(atleast).

"Stay Busy, Stay Happy" - Told by my friend Karthik and i feel its so apt for life.

P.S: Oh shit, i forgot to mention( this one, probably to myself), this year was the year i started getting white hairs.Very few. But still.. An event in my life :D

P.P.S: I am not sorry if this is not interesting for you. since this is my life and its enough if it is for me atleast.*attitude eh?* :D