Along Came The Other Woman…

It came upon me suddenly… I was chatting with my friend via the office communicator and I realized that I had not heard his voice in ages. I had almost forgotten what his girly voice sounded like! Hehehe…  No, the “his” is not a typo…thank you very much!

And then it dawned on me! The only calls I get these days are from my husband! Hmmm…meaning that if I wasn’t blessed with such an amazing husband then I’d probably not be getting any calls  at all sef. Na wa o. I pondered on this shocking bit of insight and was able to identify the culprit… I dare say, the sneaky steal-er of intimacy derived through meaningful communication in relationships! Yup! The Blackberry!!!

I took out time to google about the blackberry (yeah, thank God for google ba? It’s an amazing tool :)) and the question I asked went thus (“thus” is on my list of funny words by the way…don’t mind me, I’m digressing I know)… anyways the question went thus: “why was the blackberry invented?”.

Answers.com told me the blackberry was invented to make the communication lives of many people a lot easier. From texting, to the worldwide web, people could easily interact with each other. Hmmm… I took my Sherlock Holmes role a bit further and probed ask.com and I was informed that the blackberry was introduced for lightning-fast email checks or for staying connected through BlackBerry Messenger (BBM).

Easily interact…Staying connected… come now… let’s be honest. Can we truly say we are staying connected since the blackberry came into the communication medium scene? Really? And when I say staying connected, I don’t mean checking the recent updates of your BBM contacts o. Really… are we letting these electronic devices take over our basic human interactions? I know all about the ingenious smileys (my favorite is the not interested smiley, it never fails to crack me up). Brilliant I admit, but can a BBM hug smiley really take the place of a real warm bear hug? Talk true o. Can pings replace the simple pleasure of face-to-face conversation or at least hearing the voice of your friend over the phone? And please let’s not even start on the topic of the broadcast messages (especially the forwarded ones). Can anything be more impersonal than those purple fonts? Be honest o! It has even gotten to the point that we don’t even call our friends on their birthdays… Nope! we simply just ping the cakes (thanks to BBM smileys) or maybe we just allow the birthday person’s face to grace our DPs for a part of that day… hmmmm… are we really staying connected? Really?

We are all guilty of this (I am too), but I remember when I got this insight, I rang a friend.  From the tone of her voice, it was obvious she was wondering why I called. Lol. I could almost hear her mind saying “why didn’t you just ping me?”. But guess what? When I told her I just called to check up on her, the pleasure in her voice was tangible. She was pleasantly surprised and I felt good I was the cause of that.

Fact: people love it when they are given attention, when they are treated specially. Now, I’m not saying the blackberry is completely evil o. No, it has its many usefulness too. But let’s take nurturing relationships a notch higher. Abi how una see am?

Oh before I forget…a friend of mine (who I had not heard from in ages) pinged me the other day (as in PING!!!– SMH). I was of course glad to “hear” from her after such a long spell. The next thing she said sent me into mild shock.  “Don’t mind me jare, was trying to check if my BB subscription is still up cos I don’t seem to have network”… Hian! Like seriously??? The only response I could muster was “hmmm…okay”.

Go figure!