Friend?!

For the first time I blocked a person on my Facebook! I don’t generally add total strangers. In fact only friends of friends can see my profile. So, when this person added me as a “friend”. Checked his/her’s friend list for mutual friends. Saw the names of really good friends. Thought of pinging them and verifying, instead I was stupid & added the person. When the person pinged me, he/she (I could not figure out from the name! 🙂 ) said he/she didn’t know my friends either. We were added just like that!! Who does that? Why would one do that? Well I would not….anyways, I ended up “unfriending” after informing that I was going to do that. I find a friend request within minutes. I had to resort to blocking the person.

This made me wonder. What makes one a friend?

As we grow older, have we become more wary?  Is it one’s experiences or is it just plain paranoia?! One would have seen many memes saying Facebook friends are not real friends but don’t we all connect to so many through various such media? There is many a times that a person I have not met at all being a better friend than even someone I have known for ages!!

I do wish it were as easy in life to block people as it is on Facebook! Like I said, I never had done that earlier, and this was a first. So, may be I can learn how to block people in life outside the internet too?! Long way to go. Would it mean less hurt? or less experiences? All I did was not post anything here and…like an addict, I am back posting. I don’t know when I will again or if I will even…. I have no idea what I want to do! Not just to this blog but in general!! 😀

I was told I am a friendly person but not as open as people might consider me to be! This was not from one person but quite a few. They said yeah, you are friendly but have a wall around you. No one can really get close to you!! I don’t know! I always thought I was one huge open book that anyone can read & never held anything back (not so good considering a lot of things :p ). I guess I first have to learn who I am before knowing who my friends are?! 🙂 This said, I must say yet again like a lot of times earlier, I have one set of friends who are my major pillars of support. They know who they are! Thank you & sorry for all the times when I am a huge pain in the wrong place. Oh yes, I also do have those “friends” who come and go when they feel like and expect me to be just the same when they condescend to get back in touch! May be it is just me….who thinks with all this technology around, it takes just under a minute to send a message to say hey! and stay in touch. With so many means of communicating, I feel we still just don’t!

Things definitely were better back when we had no emails (or emails on the slowest of dial up connections – a luxury), only landline phones (sometimes even that would not be in our home). Yeah, I guess it is a sign of becoming old…saying in those good old days! 🙂  but they were definitely way better!!!! *Sigh* Just wish life were a lot simpler with no games being played & all being just plain straightforward… my utopia?!

 

 

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Isn’t it weird?

I’ve off late been wondering how weird it is that people with most access to technology and the best means of communication are the most incommunicado. Or is it just those who are in my life who are like that?
These highly tech savvy people seem to have internet access 24/7, a phone with a good network in their hands (phones like the iphone or blackberry), signed up in all kinds of networks from Google+ to facebook to Twitter to whatever else there is…. So in theory, they must be accessible all the time and respond to a call by some means. Sadly, this is not the case.

I feel like I was more in touch with people back in the days when we did not have mobile phones, and internet was at snail’s pace and not omnipresent. Is it me? Probably it is!!

Read this somewhere

The Silent Killer of relationships is the lack of communication…. communicate before misunderstanding separates you, with hurt, pain, n thoughts

How many of us bother to just say hello?! or even smile at someone we know when we pass by them on the corridor at work?! When all it takes is even a virtual poke or a text message, there seems to be hardly any effort to keep in touch. If someone calls out of the blue, the thought that crosses one’s mind is …ok so what does that person want?! Get to the point already!!!

As I said earlier, may be it is just me and my cynical-self! I used to make an effort to drop that occasional email just to say hi and enquire about welfare. Now I just feel it is futile. I used to send in updated pics of A to people….now I don’t bother! In fact there are times I feel like it is not worth the time or effort to do any of this.

I had quite an accident last week. Called this friend who I have known for ages now. Recounted this…and in the midst of handling this, hung up after asking a query about where I can get the car repaired. Had I been in this person’s place or had it been a few years back, I would have received a call say half an hour or hour later enquiring if things were alright. Guess what? The person pings me when I log on to a chat module much later in the night….and asks “so did you get the car to the repair shop?!” I lost it and responded saying that the question was way too early to be answered…and this friend just disappeared! I guess I must just be thankful that this friend even bothered to ask me later on at night?!?!

Just feel like I am turning more cynical, more bitter & less hopeful by the day. Makes me wonder if it is just me or people are just not what they used to be?! Feel like there is more distance now that the world is virtually a much smaller place…at least in my case!

Communication

This post is up as a result of my unyielding but relentless efforts at contacting a few people. One assumes that in this day & age, reaching someone would be child’s play – that is true only if that person wants to communicate.

Gone are the days when one had to actually write a letter, put a pen to paper – make that effort, write, address it & post it. It depended on the postal service if it would eventually reach the recipient or not.

Weren’t people a little more communicative in those times!?

Weird! Almost everyone has at least one mobile phone, one email ID. There are so many social networking sites, twitter and what not. Yet, why has it become such an effort to get in touch with some one?!

One calls, the call is not answered. Worse, most people do not even return those missed calls!!! Mails go unanswered. I wonder if it is the skeptical me but are people generally being more rude than ever?! Does etiquette even get featured here?!

Personally, I tend to reply to mails sent to me (if at all!!! 😉 ), answer all IMs, tweets if I am mentioned, respond to messages on my Facebook wall. It is not that I have no work at all as that seems to be the most popular excuse.” I am busy!!!”

Was wondering if it were just me or people are ignoring others intentionally even (think this because there are caller-ids! 🙂 ). Is it  a message to say hey I don’t want to be friends with you any more? Like breaking up over a text message, may be this is the not so subtle way of saying get off my life!?

Being unreachable with so many means of communicating sounds utterly ridiculous to me. It is not like one is in the remote Amazonian jungle with absolutely no connectivity at all (or am I in stone age and there is superb connectivity even there?! :D). Communication means seem to have evolved, but unfortunately I feel that most people have decided not to use these effectively! Keeping in touch with each other could never be easier, yet it seems like such a chore!!

Here is to technology! Let us all make effective use of it! To those who want to be rude, I really don’t know what to say not that you care!