iStress

The iPad is becoming a frequent point of contention in our household and the cause of considerable amount of stress for me. I'll start with the smallest point (person) and then go on to the bigger (older) ones. No, I am not going to say I have conflicts with r~ about how long she can be on the iPad. Thankfully that day is not here yet. She is a pretty good kid that way and hardly ever demands to play on the iPad but she has recently gotten into this routine of face-timing when it's night in America.

It's a long story. She doesn't like the dark much and asked why the sun had to set and why it was not bright and somehow we landed on the topic of it being daytime in India while it's night in the US and she got fascinated by this concept. So, when it is night here, she would say, Oh, it's dark here which means thatha paati will be awake, so let's facetime with them. And soon, it became a routine for her. Oh, it's night here, let's facetime to the extent that she would refuse to talk to her grandparents on the phone. "No, only facetime!".

It's quite interesting watching her interact with her thatha paati on the iPad. Although she has spent considerable time with her grandparents face to face, now her routine is to chat using the iPad and so, she doesn't treat it any differently from face to face. She'll usually demand for facetime and then proceed to do her normal activities as if her thatha paati were right in the room with her. It's not "different" for her to interact with her grandparents this way. Today, she said, "Let's take thatha on a walk into the night!" and I asked her how and she said, "Joiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii, like this" and she showed me how we would carry the iPad with us into the night which means that thatha is coming with her for a walk into the night :)

Anyway, coming back to the contention points, the second is k (of course). Every morning, I get up a little earlier than k and r~ so that I can get her lunch box ready while they catch up on some more zzzs. And after screaming out their names 22 times and opening the curtains and playing loud music, k will sleep walk his way into the kitchen, look around for his glasses and/or coffee and then sit down with his...iPad while I fume in the kitchen, calling out a constant stream of instructions that usually lightly bounce off his ears and fall onto the carpet. And when I questioned the necessity to make the iPad an essential body part this early in the morning, he said, well, isn't that what our dads did? They sat with the newspaper -- that's the only difference! This actually made me laugh...the other day, I was drawing with r~ and I found a picture that reminded me of what he said. So, I drew it out on a piece of paper and gifted it to him as a reminder of how thoughtfully he had held up to his side of the argument:

It came out pretty well I thought. He asked if I thought that's where he was heading at the top (notice the baldness), I hadn't thought of that :p

So, the third point which is most likely to cause some heart condition in me has to do with my parents and the iPad. Usually a facetime (chat) session on the iPad goes like this:

Me: "Amma, can you come on facetime, r~ wants to chat..."

Amma: "Now???"

Me: "Yes."

Amma: "But, can't I  just talk to r~ on the phone?"

Me: "No." (With r~ screaming into my ears all along, "Facetime, facetime, thatha, paati, facetime!!!")

Amma: "The iPad is in the bureau..."

Me: (With slightly elevated pulse rates) "Why?" -- This is like the point in BBT where the Leonard warns someone not to ask Sheldon Why.

Amma: "Because it is expensive and lot of people come in here. It will get stolen. I can't find the bureau keys..."

Appa: "Amma is looking for the bureau keys to get the iPad out. What is r~ doing? Oh...I hear her. What is she saying? Hellooooo...helllooooooo paaaappa..."

Me: "She won't come on phone pa..." (Thaaaaaaaaaaaathaa, paaaaaaaati...wheeeeeeee -- now she is just screaming just because it is fun)

Amma: (Somewhat breathlessly) "I took it out..."

Me: "Ok, can you come on facetime?"

Amma: "It's not working"

Me: (Enter gritting teeth stage) "W h a t  do you mean, it's not working?"

Amma: "It shows a red broken battery and won't even start"

Me: (Coming close to matching r's decibel level) "Why is it not charged?"

Amma: "I can't leave it charging forever. The iPad will heat up...also if it is left outside..." (repeats the whole reason about burglars targeting iPad2's in India)

Me: "Put it on charge now"

Amma: "I did. It's still showing a broken battery."

Me: "Aaarg"

After sometime, I have calmed down, had some cold water, managed to give r~ some fingerpaint which she is using as floor paint but at least she is quiet now. I call India again.

Me: "Ok, iPad charged?"

Amma: "Yes. It doesn't work."

Me: "???"

Amma: (Patiently expands on her terse statement) "Nothing works"

Me: "@#@##$%"

Amma: (Excitedly) "Shall I come on the laptop? It will only take 2 minutes?"

Me: "No, we bought the iPad for a reason....what doesn't work?"

So you can see how it goes. Thankfully, that time L~ was home and he deduced that the internet connection was down and so fixed it (which in India, you do by restarting the modem. Five times a day.)

I haven't even touched upon me remote debugging from here and teaching my dad how to increase volume on the iPad or the time they lost the charger and spent more than the iPad cost to replace it -- need a part 2 to this post :p

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The wall.

I wonder if people read blogs anymore. In this time of status updates and millisecond micro updates aka tweets, do people have the patience to read personal blogs anymore? I ask because there was a time when I used to read blogs and the only blogs I seem to be reading now are technical ones. Instead, I log onto Facebook and stare at my wall. Now, the wall is many things at once. It's sort of a buzzing microcosm of lives (reminds me of Michael Crichton's 'Prey'). Much like Jack's beanstalk, there is no limit to its growth. If you run out of new status updates to read, you can always go back in history and read what people thought two days back (If explained to someone a decade back, they might have questioned the very sanity of why one would do that). And here we are, trying to cling on to the wall while at the same time peering over our shoulders to stare at the drama unfolding elsewhere on the wall.

    meets :) 

I guess in a way, our virtual life has brought us back full circle. Man was and will always be a social animal. Perhaps earlier, he dropped by a neighbour's house to catch up on the little town gossip and lives of others and later; he dialed a bunch of numbers to do the same over the phone. He then progressed to chatting and developed a whole new language to do that. And now, he has multiple ways to share his life with all those people. Which is fun, come to think of it. Who doesn't like talking about themselves? And now, I can share my thoughts on my wall or tweet them and I have the satisfaction that I have sent me 2 cents out to the world at large to ponder upon.

This new way of virtual living raises some interesting questions. How does a person maintain a sense of mystery about him (assuming he wants to)? A friend of mine has not gotten herself a Facebook account. Still (I know!). She considers it a waste of time. Hmm, can't say I entirely agree with her. I follow technical pages on Facebook and I find a lot of useful information there. Even my workplace holds virtual conversations on Facebook! So, back to the mystery question. FB is addictive, we all know that but it also sorts of blurs boundaries that earlier existed in traditional settings. Take our workplace, for example. My colleagues are my facebook friends and know that r~ made a bookmark in the Morris book shop last Saturday, for example. And that little bit of info, somehow changes their perception of me. I am not sure if that's a good thing or not. It makes people seem more human -- all these random bits of trivia about them...

There's the whole long tail argument. If I were a salwaar-kameez clad, modern but tom-boyish teenage girl who likes languages but hates Math and also likes Savannah from Savannah, I might just find someone just like that on FB and then we can start a fan page with an uncommonly long name :)

And then, there's the whole twitching-fingers syndrome -- the urge to constantly stay up to date on the happenings of the wall. I wonder if the constant (albeit) slight adrenaline rush when we are privy to a new information bit will make our normal life seem a tad more boring? Nothing is happening every second of the day (except maybe your 2 year old let water flow from the sink to all the restroom shelves and let them soak the soft bathroom mats...oh! Long story!). And then, there was this article I read recently about how FB actually makes people sadder because they keep comparing themselves (some unconsciously) to the happy pictures and delightful wall updates and thinking their own lives don't match up (which is unrealistic, no one leads lives smiling with their face smushed to their lovely child's cheek all the time -- the next second, the child, for all we know, took a nice dab of blue paint and marked it on both their faces...)

Not sure what to make of all this innovation. Technology is changing. And we, with it. Of that, I am sure.

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IT, mystique and relationships.

I took this really interesting class, Advanced Operating Systems under Dr.Griff @ UK and in one of the classes he talked about pervasive computing. Quite fascinating -- images of intelligent lighting systems, homes, even clothes that warm up or cool down according to a person's body temperature by using nanocomputers! What I want to write today is not exactly pervasive computing as the definition goes but in a way, this seems like pervasive computing to me. Think of the number of social networking technologies there are -- facebook, myspace, twitter, blogs and information engines -- google, yahoo search, wikis. It seems to me that people are finally finding outlets to express themselves; outlets they could not even have dreamed to adopt a decade back. That's great, mostly. From the disgruntled house wife (Home maker? -- Think "Mitr") to the adolescent gamer, everyone is online and "connected" all the time!

I wonder if this whole wave of constant-connectedness will change the dynamics of human relationships. Let's take blogs for instance. I hear SRK and Amir Khan blog too. It was big news when the big B started blogging. Now, my very first serious crush, SRK, blogs too. I assumed I would be thrilled but when I googled for his blog, I almost wished I wouldn't find it. Somehow the charm and mystique he (and bollywood) stands for would be lost if I read it and realized that he is just like you and me. But then, he is human too, just elevated to dizzying heights, I guess. So, why wouldn't he want to blog and express what goes through his head? Thoughts and observations too trivial or too complex to express face-to-face but perfectly safe as bits on a screen?

The same goes for facebook. Almost everyone at work is on facebook -- we know each other's trivial and not-so-trivial thoughts that we feel we need to type as status messages on facebook, we know our big days and celebrations, our not-so-great moments and setbacks. Everything bare for everyone (or perhaps a smaller network of people) to digest.

I sometimes think if I were a teenager in this current era, I would find it very hard to fall in love! The mystery or hidden faces of people no longer have a chance of existing in the shadows. So, I don't really get a chance to wonder if he is thinking of me, if he secretly reads classic romances or if he actually cries at sad movies, if his friends are wild and unpredictable or if he has a hidden talent. Thanks to social networking sites, they are all out there for me to see. I know most of what there is to know about him. Hmm...interesting. Wonder what li'l r~ would think of this comment when she becomes a teenager :)

On the other hand, I have reconnected with faces from my past. We are sort of in-touch. We thumbs-up each other when we see photos we like, we comment on random posts now and then. Not what you can call a heart-to-heart talk, laughing and giggling over college days, but still not strangers who need to be reintroduced after several decades either.

So, what does this all come down to? Absence no longer makes the heart grow fonder because there is no real absence in the real sense of the word, unless of course you are like my brother and are phone/internet-free because you are in some quaint little town somewhere in Kashmir hiking towards the Himalayas? But then you are back to being connected and the magic is there for everyone to see -- which sorts of disperses it and makes it not so magical...right?

I mean, my brother texts me, my gynecologist texts me about appointment details and my boss does when he is in meetings and cannot actually call. Seems like we are all there for each other. No mystery, no wonders.

"Hmm, the last I saw her was when I graduated...she always wanted to settle down in America...wonder if she is still with so-and-so..."

becomes

"Hmm, the last I saw her was when I graduated. She is now in Africa, a travel guide who has written several books on the topic. Nope, she is still single."

There is a difference...isn't there? It all seems fabulous if you think about it -- I can see my blog comments on my iphone when am waiting at the dentist's office. Don't have to worry about delayed gratification. It's all instant. But then, the kindle can never replace the authenticity of a worn-out novel in a library. I guess, that makes me old-fashioned. But, you already know that -- you saw my facebook update.

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Touchy-feely.

Today is glorious! I decided to work from home and nothing beats working in pjs with sunlight streaming into the room! Allergies notwithstanding, I opened the door wide open and let all the nice Spring-time pollen-laden air stream in! Today is the kind of day that makes you want to write a blog post full of small nothings!

Hmm...

Ok, now I really have nothing to say.

Ok, thought of something, I recently discovered that a good selection of Tamil movies is available on Netflix, not very recent ones but I can't complain since our local desi store does not carry any Tamil DVDs at all. Can't blame him since most folks here just download err...I mean find other ways to catch the latest Tamil movies. The next movie on my list is "Oru naal oru kanavu". Yes, I know I have a lot of catching up to do but in Lex, this is the best I can do. I really want to watch "Santhosh Subramaniam" and that Prakash Raj turned God movie and a bunch of others.

We also recently ordered a lot of ...stuff from Amazon. You know, am not really an amazon-netflix kind of person, meaning I like to visit the store (by store I mean a brick and mortar store), browse through selections (even if limited) and pick something by hand and pay for it. I swore I wouldn't let go of Blockbuster, our neighbourhood video store that we can walk to, until they charged me $4.50 for an old English movie, that sadly ended our relationship and marked the beginning of my affair with Netflix.

Still I haven't given up hope. I drive, sometimes walk to my local library and browse, yes browse through bookshelves and pick books out by hand, I still buy my groceries from a local coop store and I hope those experiences are here to stay. I can't imagine reading ebooks exclusively and ordering "fresh" vegetables from an online store! Remember how we shopped for vegetables in India? My mom would actually try breaking the ends of bright green ladies fingers, or turn the rich purple kathrikai (brinjal) round and round to make sure it had no marks on it, the aroma of fresh cilantro would tickle our noses until we naturally gravitated towards the store even if we had vegetables back home. Maybe, I don't break the ends of the okra here but I still relish the visual feast the arrangement of different colored vegetables provide! No sir, I claim, I will not be adding my good old vegetables to a cart anytime soon!

Your touchy-feely writer has spoken her bit!

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