Face ‘Booked’!

You can call me a Facebook fan! I check the social networking site at least three to four times a day. That, however, does not make me an addict, yet, because FB is banned/blocked at office. And I’ve not reached the withdrawal symptom stage where I’d search for devious means to get FB on my laptop or use ‘it-costs-the-earth-and-heavens-and-beyond’ Omantel WAP on my mobile.

People call FB a waste of time. What’s the need of poking people when you can do so in real life? Well, in that case, I would have to fly half-way across the world to poke people… on my Friends list.

I like Facebook because:

# Yeah, sometimes it makes me a kid all over again! A classmate posted a group photo of when we were in the third standard. I could only stare wistfully at the long hair and remember Ms Tessy giving me the Green Squad badge… (no connection here. I had long hair and Ms Tessy sported a boy cut!)  Right now, the only badge of honour that could remotely come my way would probably be in the form of an epitaph, “She died of overwork!”

# All the getting together with old friends on FB has spilled over into real life. Attended a school-friends reunion (yeah six people can make a lot of noise and still be called a reunion) and went back to being a school-girl all over again. Now, a grand reunion of the entire batch is being planned and which will probably happen in a few years from now, or after the brat gets married… , you get the drift.

# Photos. Armed with a digital camera, one can today take on the world… or take over Facebook. I recently went through 150 photos of someone’s birthday party… shot from every conceivable angle. He must have had loads of patience and a super-speed Internet connection to do this. Dude, haven’t you heard of Picasa?

# All the nieces and nephews are on Facebook. So I can show off… Yeah, only a ‘cool’ aunt can post those imaginative status updates. One nephew wrote to the husband, “I am in regular touch with maami. I write frequently on her Wall!” The husband must be wondering how someone from Madras can write on a wall in Muscat! LOL!  ‘Cool’ will only continue until the brat joins the FB bandwagon. He’ll probably call me a psychic nutcase then!

# The one time I totally ‘heart’ Facebook is when I am on vacation. I made my colleagues go green with envy with status messages on the rain by the second. Samples: “It’s raining!”, “It’s raining heavily!”, “Went on a bike ride and got drenched in the rain!”, “Looking out of my window, enjoying the rain and reading a best-seller!” And since it rained wherever I went, there must have been zillions of messages on the rain! That was indeed ‘emotional atyaachar’ for people braving the 50-degree heat in Muscat.

# FB gets my creative juices overflowing… C’mon, you can’t get writer’s block trying to type out three lines! Also, I get to see others’ creativity as well. I have friends whose sense of humour and penchant-for-one-liners surfaces only on FB!  And they rock!

# Where else can I point out to a senior colleague that he has made a proofing, spelling or grammatical mistake? Only on FB… Can get away saying that it’s all in the name of fun. Who takes FB seriously, yeah?

There are loads of  ‘serious’ reasons why I like FB. As a journalist, I get ideas for stories. I get to read other journalists’ perspectives or takes on issues from all over the world! I get to see serious and funny videos, read some interesting links and keep in touch with friends and family. And thankfully, I don’t add random people to FB, only those I know in real life!

May seem inane or waste of time to some, but for me, well, being on FB has become a way of life.