I'm bored to tears in the uni library, studying for my last exam, and then heading over to HK on the 16th yaaay! I've been so slack this year, I wondered where all that energy from my first year of uni went. Cramming for exams, rushing assignments a day or two before it's due. What am I studying uni for? It might be partially because of family pressure to continue a good education while they can still afford to send me to school, and get a good job and have a good life. But I truly enjoy studying. So much in fact I don't know what I'm going to do when I leave uni. I'll be so lost amongst the sea of the world, adrift and scared. If I do choose to go into the advertising industry, I'm told new entrants have to make their presence known in the industry before you can step foot into a company, by building networks and attending events and such. But I'm too shy to approach these high and mighty creatures, dressed in a baseball cap, a shabby coat, torn jeans and guzzling beer with their friends. What reason do I have, or what do I offer them to break into their circle and make them see my presence, my worth. Do I have any worth in their eyes, or am I just like another nervous newcomer that seeks the bottom of their dirt-covered sneakers? Can uni really prepare me for this?
Maybe I should hide at home, and in the depths of the internet, indulging in my virtual desires and looking upon the cyber world, bored and distanced. It's been said that the younger generation is more physically friendly with each other, and a corporate cuddle may become the norm in the business world, rather than a brief and formal handshake. That stems from the relationship fostered from online interactions, where the anonymity of the internet and physical distance makes people more emotionally open to people you wouldn't normally be able to confide in. And the accumulation of all this emotion extends into an actual meeting, where people pour all the emotions into physical actions, such as hugs and touches and general proximity. Does the internet deepen a relationship you have with a person, or does it make it shallow? Or is it a case of the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer? Where you may be able to keep in touch with a hundred friends, you only bother talking to ten or twenty of those, and then only five or six you constantly talk to. Does the facelessness of instant messaging make people stronger? MySpace, FaceBook and Twitter are the giants of today's social networking sites, and their appeal is a virtual space all about you, a place you can show your own face and make your own mark on the infinite space of the cyberworld.
Personalisation is a great thing, you claim a thing your own, something that is uniquely and entirely yours, composed of your dreams and choices and personality, infused with a soul of itself, a manifestation of your being. Something which cannot be tangibly held now can be of great value, because it represents a part of you. Email addresses, game characters, networking sites, page layouts, hobbies and interests, opinions, ideas, systems or theories, and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on. With the development of all these intangible personalisation tools on the computer and the internet, are we less materialistic, or less possessive of tangible goods? Or maybe it works as a multiplier effect, convincing us that what we hold in cyberland is just as valuable as what we can hold in our hands.
If the internet failed tomorrow, completely shut down and would not work, would you pick up your phone and call your friend, and tell them what happened today? Would you pick up a pen and write to your friend you met on a forum what you think of the current education system and ask him of his opinion? Would you drive to that designer's house downtown and see their latest works? Would you not skip that class because now you can't access that lectures online? Would you print out photos of the last party you went to, stick it on your bedroom wall and invite friends and friends of friends to come see and write comments on it? Would we do any of these things even if we never had the internet in the first place? Has the internet made us lazier, or more proactive? Are we designing and inventing product and services that enhance life, or take away from the process of life? Are our dreams to work hard to live a good life, or to live life as easily and carefree and luxuriously as possible? Is not working hard a sin? Does failing school mean failing in life?
How hard do we have to try before we can satisfactorily say, "I tried my best, there is nothing more I can do." Is there a standard of how hard you should try before giving up? When there is no end in sight, when there seems to be no end or no reward, are we working to make an end, or working because that's what I've always been doing. How hard can we push the boundaries before we break it and fall out of the circle of society? One day passes onto the next with no respite, only with determination pushing you to do the things you should be doing, or want to be doing. How should we prioritise our time, that we always seem never to have enough of. Do we have role models that we aspire to, or anti-models that we aspire never to stoop as low as that. Is negativity the new black, and positivity always reaching a hand into our wallets or time or leisure or dreams. This is an awfully long and digressive post, I wonder how many people has finished reading all of it.
Well I did get a bit sidetracked from my original topic, but isn't that the way of life?
Angels Crying by E-Type http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTP0ZVWjjfA (note: I hope this is the song I listened to cos there's no sound on this comp at uni and it beats the official mv which is really weird)
