Catshanghai

My exile from Facebook has ended, although I have never spent too much time hanging out in this network.

Sometime before Christmas I tried to add a few friends from the mobile Facebook site using my crappy HTC Tytn Windows Mobile cellphone, but Facebook defaults to ‘add all’. Like an idiot, I added hundreds of students and parents as friends. It was never my intention to mix my professional and private lives to this extent so I deleted my Facebook account. I had to Email them for special instructions to delete my profile, but it worked.

A month later, I am taking stock of my life before China and realise that I am getting further and further adrift from my friends back in the UK. We are all older and busy with our families and jobs. They are in different time zones or not connected to the Internet. They don’t use Skype, Twitter or even Email. Keeping in touch with friends from the UK is not always easy. There is a tendency to drift apart.

Even though I spend hours every day on the Internet, I am not always an effective networker. Call it shyness or a passive satisfaction that is very happy to spend much of my social time with Jenny, our child to be and Chog the fat cat. Every now and again, I feel the need to poke my head out of the shell in search of face to face and virtual network friends using tools such as Twitter and Facebook. The birth of our child in May somehow makes me want to get in touch with people again, such as my old university friends and the good folks from Sheffield’s Gyaltsabje Buddhist Centre.

It will take me a little while to retrieve the connections that I deleted when I got rid of the old Facebook account. I hope to find a few more lost souls such as the tall Dutchman from Orange County who has a habit of turning up at the most extraordinary places when you least expect him!