Thank you facebook.com !

Just yesterday I was having a discussion with friends of mine of how I like facebook and don't mind that some people will reveal all the minute details of their lives as status messages, share pictures, basically become a little less private.

Today I got to hang out with an old friend of mine back from Xavier's, Rucha. What a great time I had...and the only reason I could meet her was because she was a friend on facebook, she posted she was coming to US and I happened to see that on the homepage of my profile ! YAY !

Thank you facebook !

Please convert text to speech

We don't need to be face-to-face for communication anymore. Email, SMS, Google chat, etc have made friends, family and businesses more accesible and communication very rapid. But in this connectivity we've lost important aspects of communication; emotion, tone, body language, response. I miss all of these..I'm a phone, meet-up person but I know that it's not really possible all of the time.

When chatting with someone, I say something, there's a weird sorta response or a cold response but it's basically just "text". I have no real idea what it means. All sorts of things go on in my head - have I offended? What do they mean? Was I misunderstood? Did she understand? Why would he say that? This isn't the situation when I'm actually talking to someone on the phone or meeting them in person. I can gauge what response my words have and I can ask outright if I'm confused.

Another 'downside' (or 'upside' to some) is the luxury of able to ignore or 'I didn't get it..' When the communication is electronic, we have the luxury to either ignore or just say that we never got the message. This happens more often than most of us would like.

I usually just pick up the phone and call. I can see how SMS, email is useful. We don't all have the time to talk when the phone rings, or meetup. Email gives us freedom, and sometimes it's just easier to write something out (after having thought about it) and express your feeling that way. I know that I'll frequently write up something long, either just because I don't want to say it out loud or I can articulate it better and with the right frame of mind or I just don't want the other person to be on spot.

But at the end...I love the phone. I will call my friends back home in India so I can talk to them. It's annoying and upsetting at times when they don't pick up or are too busy or whatever. But I'm a people's person, whatever the advantages of email, I will first pick up the phone.

Let's talk...

Today I went for a random systems biology symposium at Rutgers. When I got to the breakfast, all the tables were full save one with a few chinese folk. I sat down and wished everyone a good morning and was hoping to start a conversation. I like to talk to new people, I like to meet people at conferences or in general. "Good morning" came the reply and then promptly they started talking to each other in their language. WTF !!

I just don't get it...conferences, symposia, meetings, group discussions, journal clubs are meant to exchange ideas; keyword - EXCHANGE. There was no exchange between me and anyone else during the course of the conference. God knows I tried.

I don't understand this isolationist stand. I've seen it amongst Indians as well. They tend to flock together and really start gabbing in their hindi or gujarati or whatnot. Even when there is a foreign presence who probably can't even pick out words and snippets. It annoys the life out of me. Personal experiences aplenty since in a group of turkish people, I'll sometimes just be staring and the same for Asli in a group of Indian people. Noticed the same when there is a group of chinese people, russians, spanish..doesn't matter.

I get it..don't get me wrong. I do get it. You want to speak your own tongue, there's comfort in the flock...but not when you want to exchange ideas, have a conversation, not want to alienate someone. But if we want to improve, understand and respond, we need to be able to communicate.

Excerpt..

"The cough would start in silence; first there was the great inhale, the smoke sucked deep down into the lungs, and held there while the victim waited for what was to be an agonized body spasm. The face would first turn a sweaty lemon, the shoulders hunched, the back humped like Brahmin bull. The legs would bend, the hand grabbed the thighs to support the coming convulsion. The cough would start somewhere down in the shins, the eyes would be screwed tight to prevent being jettisoned from the head, the mouth gripped tight to preserve the teeth. Suddenly! from afar comes a rumbling like a hundred Early Victorian Water Closets. Slowly the body would start to tremple and the bones to rattle. The first things to shake were the ankles, the up the shins travelled the shakes, and next the knees would revolve and turn jelliform; from there up the thighs to the stomach it came, now heading for the blackened lungs. This was the stage when a sound like a three ton garden roller being pulled over corrugated iron was heard approaching the heaving chest. Following this up the convulsed body was a color pattern, from a delicate green at the ankles to layers of pinks, blue, vericose purple, and sweaty red. As the cough rose up the inflated throat, the whole six colours were pushed up into the victim's face. It had now reached the inner mouth; the last line of defence, the cheeks, were blown out the size of football bladders. The climax was nigh!! The whole body was now a purple shuddering mass! After several mammoth aattempts to contain the cough, the mouth would finally explode open! Loose teeth would fly out, bits of breakfast, and a terrible rasping noise filled the room, Aweeioussheiough!! followed by a long silent stream of spume-laden air; on and on it went until the whole body was drained of oxygen, the eyes were popping and the veins like vines standing out on the head, which was now down 'twixt knees. This atrophied pose held for seconds. Finally, with a dying attempt, fresh air was sucked back into the body, just in time to do it all over again. Bear in mind this was usually performed by sixty men all at the same time. Whenever I see those bronzed 'Jet Set Men' whose passport to International smoking is a King Size, I can't help but recall those Bronchial Dawn Coughing Wrecks"

- Spike Milligan from "Adolf Hitler- My part in his downfall".

Actually, with minimal editing this could easily be made a description of something else..