Aiyo, Technology (痛)爱科技

It hasn't been easy the past 2 weeks. Recovery wasn't even expected, much less to say it would have been easy. I thought of putting it down in words here but refrained as I was afraid of immortalising those really down moments. But now, I could say I had finally got over the episode and look back in a more positive view. Even more surprisingly, I realised that my ups and downs in the past month had a lot to do with IT.

All along, I have considered myself to be rather IT savvy, though definitely not at the frontline of the latest fads and gadgets. It was only some 3 months back that I decided to pick up some new skills (lest I rot away :P) and explore into how I take things a step further. So I played around with the idea of blogging, hoping I can better my writing skills and pick up new stuff like Photoshop and html. After some blog-surfing, I realised that having a blog not only allows one to write down his own chapters in life, but they can consciously or sub-consciously affect the feelings of the people who read their posts, regardless of whether the readers know the blogger or not.

When November began, I was finalizing how I wanted this blog to work for me, after playing with the idea for a month. I also decided to revive my dormant Friendster account and joined in the Facebook frenzy, which was quite a big step given that anit-social bit in me. I now understand what's the big fuss about, and must say Facebook is definitely more fun with all those "how in the world did they come up with that idea" kinds of applications.

Next there was A-Mei's concert, which I attended with a 'long-time-no-see' friend and a few other friends of his. I was going to attend alone when just 2 days before I saw his nick on MSN that we arranged to go together. And with my own digital camera this time round, I could finally capture those fun memories myself (despite the not-so-high resolution and fuzzy images) and post them online for sharing.

Then one day, I came across a good buy in the papers - a8GB Creative Zen. I immediately rushed out to get one and spent the rest of the day exploring it. It was the first music player I bought for myself since a now-defunct Discman I bought 10 years ago! I just couldn't wait to transfer my files over over the next couple of days and enjoy my favourite tunes.

But the very next day, the very first news of the 5 missing national dragonboat paddlers broke on page 2 of the Straits Times. And as the story unfolded over the next week, little did I know I would be so saddened by a tragedy which mercifully did not happen around me. I wasn't a dragonboat enthusiast. Neither do I know any of the 5 victims personally. But out of mere curiosity, I visited a few of their webpages and Friendster profiles after reading about them in the papers. I never did view all as it was already too heart-wrenching after seeing the first few ones. Reading a long string of posthumous comments/tributes right below the owners' profiles and photos evoked strong emotions of sadness and sympathy in me. 4 of the 5 perished were younger than me, and all 5 had lived their lives with so much zest and zeal. Such frustrating cruelty in the way their journeys ended! What yet another grim reminder of just how small we are and how short our miserable existence can be! For almost 10 days after the tragedy, I was in 'down' mode. The feeling became even more unbearable whenever sad music played or whenever there's death in a drama . Some nights were spent tossing around in bed, trying to find answers for the tons of questions running through my head. The 2 previous posts somewhat helped me let off some steam.

Right now, I'm glad I've got the grieving over and done with, and moved on with new inspirations drawn from the incident. This post was completed after much thinking through over the past week. Hopefully, the festive mood of December can bring back some high moments for me :)