^.^ BLOG KO TO ^.^

Something just struck my head when I had a constant chat with a beloved friend and he popped the question --- “how on earth did I thrive in the desserts for almost 4 years now?”

Actually I just blabbed him with a lot of crappy anecdotes on how simple and how boring must it have been for others to follow the routines that I do here or at least to consider me anti-social for making it through in the seemingly-anti social-scenario environment available here in Yanbu, Saudi Arabia. I used to have half-half reactions before to friends who seemed to look down on my social life here. Well, partly true, I and some teaching colleagues here are mostly confined to malls and the beach as places to visit. Who would have enjoyed a scorching heat that rises to almost 42 degrees and which the sun sets almost at 7:30 p.m.? Partly, I wouldn’t blame them. But again, after introspecting with the question a friend had just retorted above, I guess, I could probably reply that the answer to that question had something to do with me being wired and most of the time electronically glued to the internet.

When I was on my first year, I used to really miss my family most of the time and had sudden homesick attack from time to time. After purchasing my first ever laptop at the age of 26, I guess all of what I felt to have missed back home would soon be available once I had my internet connection. That was what I thought could make me busy for quite some time. And sure I was. Until now, it still is.

I just could not imagine trying a week or so without access to the cyberspace and not seeing or logging in to my facebook, friendster, skype, yahoo, ym, msn, windowslive and twitter accounts. I even had twitter alarmed me in the morning replacing my analog alarn clock to do its job. I am trying not to be OC with regard to my wiredfulness over these indispensable icons. I cancelled my multiply, myspace and googletalk accounts for the reason that I am just having duplicated accounts and unnecessary reasons to waste my time on my PC and had nothing left to do for quite a time. I needed some personal-self control over my life again, as once I’ve told myself. These icons are there for me to manipulate and control and not the opposite. Right now, I just simple follow a ECN RULE (Email.Chat.Network Rule) and this time, it has to be of lesser dispense on how I used my web icons for more productive purposes. Skype and ym simply for family chat, msn for school chat, facebook and friendster for social networking, yahoomail for official email correspondence, hotmail for schoolmails and gmail for online mails. I am also trying to be less visible in cyberia as much as possible and allow my laptop to hibernate for once I a while if not at least I do random virus-checking and PC defragmenting routines.

I am looking forward to my coming home to Manila again after 2 more months because there I always claim my life back. I am the person that I used to be – enjoying and nurturing webless life with the sheer joy and simplicity of chatting, networking and laughing out loud (LOLS) with my friends and families, this time – face to face and with personal impact closer to them physically, without the dire need to check any SMS, MMS or even who had just poked me in FB.