Many of you must have read at least one book by Canadian author Malcolm Gladwell, whose books The Tipping Point, Outliers and Blink have all made it to the Number 1 spot on the New York Times best-sellers list.

This August, I’m privileged to be invited by the Singapore Institute of Management (SIM) for their 30th SIM Annual Management Lecture (AML), where Malcolm Gladwell will be speaking in two keynote presentations:

1. The Human Capitalization Challenge
2. The Entrepreneurial Profile

I’ve read two of Gladwell’s books, and I’m definitely excited to hear him speak in person.

His books are logical; you will find yourself nodding in agreement while turning the pages, and yet they are also set against conventional wisdom; making you think twice about topics ranging from social psychology to marketing, politics to self-help, and also decision-making strategies.

Having studied Human Resources in my diploma course, I am aware that many companies these days have a problem not just in talent acquisition and talent retention, but also talent capitalization. In the first keynote, Gladwell will share his thoughts and learnings about how to best ‘exploit’ the available human capital in an organization, to ensure highest efficiency at the workplace. This is relevant not only to HR managers, but also all persons within a managerial-level position, business owners, as well as supervisory-level staff.

The second keynote should be of interest to current business owners and potential entrepreneurs. Gladwell will be profiling the ‘entrepreneur type’, so I’m definitely interested to see if I fall into that ‘type’. I’ve never thought of myself as a risk-taker; yet Gladwell opines that entrepreneurs are operationally risk-averse. Regardless, this session is bound to shed some light on how we can encourage innovation and entrepreneurism at our workplace.

If you’re interested in these talks, check out the SIM-AML Facebook page, where you can find out how you can buy a ticket to this full day seminar event, as well as how you can WIN a complimentary event pass worth up to S$1337.50 (inclusive of GST and buffet lunch).

SIM Annual Management Lecture 30th Anniversary
Event details:
26 August 2011 (Friday)
9am to 4pm
Shangri-La Hotel Singapore

This post is sponsored by SIM Annual Management Lecture.

I still clearly remember how we first met.

Some time in January this year, I was complaining on Twitter that London hotels and even budget accommodation were so exorbitantly priced, and that the ones within my budget were dingy, dodgy and disgustingly flea-ridden (according to tripadvisor reviews).

Suddenly, out of nowhere, I received a Tweet from you, asking me to consider the various apartments available on your website for rent.

My initial thought was: “Pssh. Property agents!” – But after checking out your Twitter profile page, I was surprised to find that you were not a property agent!

And so I clicked.

And there I was, transported into a world full of amazing properties available for rent as holiday homes, in over 250 cities around the world!

My first impression of you was instantly dispelled, and I was immediately drawn to the exhilarating possibility of finding an accommodation in London that was affordable, clean, and homely!

How Roomorama.com worked just blew my mind – it was a platform that helped match hosts (people who have rooms or apartments to rent), and guests (who are looking places to rent).

It’s kinda like a hotel booking site, except I get to stay at apartments in non-touristy neighbourhoods rather than in hotels. Like this one, Doughty Street in Bloomsbury, London:

I found that Roomorama.com answered all my needs as a traveller! I usually prefer to stay with locals, interact with them, instead of staying at hotels.

I found that hosts on your website usually offer free use of the apartment’s kitchenette where I could cook meals if I found eating out too expensive, boring, cumbersome, etc. Many hosts also offered wi-fi internet, washing machines, etc. That’s brilliant! Although I don’t cook, at least I can microwave. Hehe!

After searching searching through a pretty impressive list of hosts and their homes, I finally settled on getting a room in the Bloomsbury area in London.

Still within Zone 1 of London, this apartment was, as the host promised, within a short walking distance to the Russell Square Underground Tube station. Perfect!

Plus, the host (Jeffrey) was really really friendly when we corresponded through Roomorama.com‘s private message! His rates were listed at £42 a night, for 2 persons! Seriously, how do you beat such prices with hotels? We ended up paying £70 a night for 3 persons (we asked him for the extra sofa single bed for my sister) including a small Roomorama.com admin fee. Very reasonable prices, indeed!

So thank you, Roomorama.com for bringing to us such an awesome service, and definitely, for answering to my frustrated call of help that fateful day in January. Without you, my London trip and stay in May 2011 wouldn’t have been as wonderful, as homely, and as amazing.

Much love from,

A super Roomorama.com fan
(who has booked yet another Roomorama.com listed property in London for the trip next month!)

Read about my latest Roomorama stay in Kensington, London, in July 2011! Nothing short of fantastic.

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To my readers, here’s what you should do if you see a room or apartment on Roomorama.com that you like.

Roomorama.com Booking Instructions

1. Click on “Inquire Now”.

2. A pop-up will appear, as below. Select your dates, and drop the host a message, asking if he would accept your booking. (Be nice, this is not a hotel booking, and hosts can reject dubious characters – after all, they are inviting you into their homes!) Feel free to ask any questions you may have about the apartment/room that you want to book.

3. Wait for a response from your host. If he accepts your inquiry, you will be notified that you can make a booking. The dashboard below is what you will see when you log in to your account.

4. Once accepted, you can make the booking, and pay. What happens is that you’ll pay the total booking amount to Roomorama.com, who will hold the funds for you till you check in to the apartment. This is to prevent errant hosts from running away with your money! So you see, it’s completely safe with Roomorama.com!

5. After you have made the payment, you will receive a “Secret Code” by email. Do not give this code to the host yet. Store it somewhere safe, and after you have arrived at your apartment and have inspected that everything is in order, do pass the code to the host, so he/she can get claim payment from Roomorama.com.

The Roomorama.com fee we paid was only a total £24 for 3 persons, 3 nights. So convenient and reasonably priced!

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Perhaps you’re now wondering: Okay, the booking process seems simple enough. How was the actual stay itself?

A review of my stay

We arrived in London on 17 May, and after some delays at the airport, we got to Jeffrey’s apartment safely. Armed with a 3G data-enabled SIM card and Google Maps, we found that the apartment was a mere 12 minute walk from the Russell Square Tube station. Jeffrey was already at the apartment, waiting for us, when we rang on his doorbell.

It was a little unfortunate that we had been shopping so much all over Europe prior to arriving in London, and we had really huge heavy luggage. Unfortunate because most London apartments, town houses and budget hotels don’t have elevators! HAHA!

Anyway, we managed to get our luggage up into the apartment, and I must say Jeffrey and his house mate Chris keep a cozy, neat and clean home.

We settled in quickly enough, with Jeffrey showing us around the apartment, the stuff we could use (like the washing machine, Wi-fi, kitchen, glasses, food we could help ourselves to, etc.) during our stay. Jeffrey also had a whole stack of maps, guide books, and even Oyster Cards for us to use as we made our way around London! That was really a nice gesture on his part.

We chatted for a bit, and he shared with us that he’s an American expat artist and a social worker (actually I had read that on his Roomorama profile page already, hehe). Anyway, he was really a lovely host!

I have no photos of his apartment, unfortunately, because I was too excited. But I can say that all his photos are accurate representations of his place, except he moved the furniture in the room around a bit.

All in all, it was a great stay, and we totally appreciated the fact that it was so accessible, and just minutes away by Tube from 2 of our favourite places in London – Covent Garden and Leicester Square / West End!

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A video about Roomorama.com

You might also want to check out their blog for featured properties, promotions, and new cities that have been added to their listings!

If you like this post, please click on my Facebook like button below, and also Tweet it!

Killing Us Softly 3: Advertising’s image of women

“Advertising tells us who we are and who we should be.” Ads sell concepts that appeal to our senses, so much that we compare our lives to ads, and hope to live up to the standards of those in ads.

An example: I’ve shared this article on Facebook and Twitter before:

5 reasons to skip the diamond engagement ring

I quote from the article:

You’re ready. You have the entire scene planned out in your head, every detail plotted and mapped until it’s perfect. At the climax of this mini-drama, he will bend on one knee and present to you a beautiful diamond ring — or, if you’re the one proposing, you will watch as her expression changes from surprise to utter delight when she sees the ring. And that’s when you’ll know: Yes, you’re getting married.

Or so the diamond industry would like you to believe. The sole purpose of this appealing fantasy is to drum up sales. Once you look past the mythos of the diamond engagement ring, you’ll see that it’s not much more than a shiny rock.

Advertising sells ideals, and we are all suckers for believing that that is how things should be. Why must we conform and let these ‘ideals’ rule our lives?

Back to the video I shared, the speaker says:

[Advertisers] surround us with images of ideal female beauty. So we all learn how important it is for women to be beautiful, and exactly what it takes. Women learn from a very early age that we must spend enormous amounts of time, energy, and above all, money, striving to achieve this ideal, and feeling ashamed and guilty when we fail. And failure is inevitable. Because the ideal is based on absolute flawlessness. … It also influences how men feel about the real women they are with.

But there is a bigger problem.

She also speaks of how the shape of women’s bodies are increasingly used not only in display ads, but also to create objects (objectification of women’s bodies), like this, this, this, this and this. And while it does not directly cause violence, it does portray women as things and objects, and turning a human being into a ‘thing’ is almost always the first step to our justifying violence against that person – we see that person as less than human, and violence becomes inevitable.

So there we have it. Sexism in ads degrade women and make women feel like lesser beings than they really are, by telling them they are not an image of the ideal beauty portrayed in ads, and they may also incite violence against women.

These are only points covered in the first third of the video – Watch the rest. She is a very eloquent speaker; sarcastic, quick witted, and humorous. I very much doubt this will change the way the world’s major organizations advertise in the media, but there are things we can do to stop our daughters from thinking that they need to be a spitting image of the ideal beauty, as portrayed in advertisements, in order to be considered beautiful.

And maybe this will change your idea about who you should be and how you should live your lives too.

Dear OCBC Bank,

Almost 3 weeks ago, I called your hotline and requested for a replacement of my Visa debit card, because the magnetic strip on my current one has been damaged. Your tele-customer service officer informed me that a new card had already been sent out, because it is expiring soon, anyway.

Over a week later, when I did not receive anything, I called the hotline again. Again, your tele-customer service officer assured me that it has already been sent out, and that I should be receiving it in the next couple of working days. I accepted his assurance.

Last Monday, I had to go overseas, and had to draw cash and carry a lot of it, because OCBC could not deliver their promise of getting my debit card to me on time. The inconvenience of it is surely something that any customer should not have to endure, especially after 2 weeks of turnaround time for your organization to react. Is that so difficult?

I returned from my trip on Saturday, and to my utter dismay, my card has still not been delivered. Of course, I called OCBC up again, and once more, your staff told me that my card has already been sent out. She told me that she will, however, check with the card issuance department, and get someone to call me back to arrange for a courier of my new card to me.

This morning, I received a call from another one of your staff, who has been assigned to handle my case. He informed me that the card had been sent out since 1 July 2010. He expressed his disbelief in the tone of his voice, when I told him that I have not received anything in the last one month.

So now we have a missing card out there, which has my existing Visa card number on it, and which can be used for any online purchase. Your staff not only did not apologize for that (nor my inconvenience of not having a Visa card), he also simply told me that he’ll arrange for a new card to be sent to me, by regular mail. When I insisted on having it couriered to me (do I really want to risk another missing card?), he informed me that I will have to bear the courier charges! Oh, I am indignant!

I then asked him to send it to me by registered mail, and he told me that OCBC doesn’t practise using registered mail, because out of their 1,000,000 customers, I’m the only one who didn’t receive my card. What? So it’s my fault that I didn’t receive the card? Or is there something wrong with OCBC’s ridiculous mailing policies?

If you cut down on all the junk mail that you send us:

• One letter for every beneficiary or payee we add to our account via internet banking
• One letter for every time we change our account details

then perhaps you could afford to use registered mail for each ATM / Debit / Credit Card that you send out to customers? I’m really shocked that you’d send a replacement card (which has a valid Visa card number and CVV, and is pre-activated) by regular, unregistered mail!

If your online banking system and its security is so good, then any transaction or changes I make via internet banking should NOT have to be confirmed by yet another letter that I do not need nor want to read. In addition, I’ve already received SMS confirmations of all these transactions, so why in the name of all things beautiful would I want another avenue to re-confirm it?

And did your other departments not receive the memo on OCBC’s green campaign to get customers to sign up for e-Statements? Why are you still sending countless paper mail to customers who have opted out of receiving paper statements? It’s like taking on a second job to earn more money to contribute to my housing fund, and then spending all that money on a shopping spree. Completely pointless and a waste of effort!

So please, get your act together.

I switched to OCBC from DBS about 5 years ago, simply because I believed that OCBC could provide better banking services for my needs, and because OCBC has so many ATMs islandwide that I never need to queue up to withdraw my own money (it’s ridiculous to have to queue up to get your own money, in my opinion). Right now, OCBC is just disappointing me with its inflexibility and mediocre service. It really should not take 1 whole month for a customer to get a replacement card, and a distressed customer sure does not need to feel patronized by rude customer service officers trying to push the blame.

Perhaps I don’t have enough money in my account for your bank staff to take me seriously. But if that’s really the case, maybe OCBC would like to inform me that I should move my money elsewhere, so I can stop wasting my time trying to communicate with your highly incompetent service staff, who think that it’s okay for banks to make mistakes, simply because I’m one out of a million customers who has been unfortunate enough to face the problem.

From your disappointed and indignant customer,
Daphne

Update: 1217hrs – OCBC staff says they’ll waive the courier charges to send my card to me, but says that they can only send it to my home address. I told him that nobody is at home to receive the courier delivery, so could they please send it to my office instead? He tells me that I’ll have to send them an authorization letter if I want it to be sent to another address. Fair enough. But I tell him that I will pass the authorization letter to the courier, together with a copy of my identification card, when they courier it to me. OCBC staff tells me:

• We cannot do that
• You can cancel your account if you are dissatisfied with our service
• We do not have any direct contact with our courier people (Which means you just pass my Visa card to people who do not report back to you on deliveries?!)
• If we send it to your house, and nobody is there, our courier will leave it under your door if you authorize us to do so. (WHAT?!)

So that means I’ll have to wait yet another week to get my card, cos I’ll have to take time to mail them an authorization letter before they can arrange for another card to be issued and delivered via courier to my office. Why does OCBC insist on inconveniencing me so?!

Update: 1323 hrs – OCBC Customer Services Manager, Narayanam has called me. He has offered me an alternative (still, the courier is not authorized to collect any letter from me) that I can drop by an OCBC branch to pass them my authorization letter, to get my new card to be couriered to my office address, this Wednesday. I suppose I’ll just have to settle for that. Lucky for both parties, I have a branch close enough to the office, and I’m willing to do so just to avoid any further contact with their customer service personnel and to avoid prolonging the pain for both of us. Thank you, Nara.

Here’s a pretty good article (actually it’s a Wiki, contributed by several authors) about how you can manage your Facebook profile and friends.

Read this article if:

1. You (you dinosaur, you) are still contemplating whether or not to join Facebook because you’re worried about ‘privacy issues’,
2. You feel that Facebook is “too personal” to link up with colleagues or business partners,
3. You’ve wondered whether or not to “friend” your ex,
4. You’ve had friends who post stories about sexual escapades, drunken moments, and racist comments on your wall,
5. You’re trying to decide if you should “friend” your boss or your boss’ boss

Don’t worry too much about how people judge you from that photo of your college party days back in 1997 or 2002 that recently found it’s way to Facebook through a friend who’s been scanning copies of his/her photo printouts. It shows you’re fun and hey, everyone’s had embarrassing moments.

If you really hate that photo, just un-tag it. Don’t get your panties into a knot just because someone’s posted a picture of you during your younger, wilder days.

Despite what some people think of Facebook (lack of privacy, so very unmanageable, I don’t need the whole world to know about me), and what some companies think of Facebook (for people who have nothing else better to do than post photos and check out other people’s profiles), Facebook is an important networking and marketing tool.

1. It creates a sometimes imagined facade the impression that you are approachable because people now know what books you like to read and what are your favorite shows on tv
2. It helps you keep in touch with old friends and acquaintances (and it never hurts to have an extended network that you can some day tap on)
3. It helps you maintain contact with new friends, customers and acquaintances
4. It gives people an avenue for getting updates about you (whether you’re an individual or a business)
5. It feeds not only your boredom but also your thirst for reading material – Facebook hosts an amazing amount of information that is actually useful at times, via your own friends who share links to articles, blogs, videos, websites, etc.

I can probably think of 100 reasons why you should be on Facebook, but if you have some reasons why you don’t think so, do share them! Or if you can think of other reasons why people should get on to Facebook, share them too!

Update 12 Aug 09, 15:14 hrs SGT: I got this from Zen on Plurk this morning:

I know I’ve said people should not be paranoid about adding their bosses on Facebook, but I guess people who have online verbal diarrhoea and don’t think about where they choose to take a dump should not add their bosses on Facebook.

Then again, they really shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near an internet connection.

Some background info: Tweet.sg, run by 33 year old software security engineer and entrepreneur Jym Cheong, and powered by Ennovative Pte Ltd, is a free service that allows Singapore Tweeters to update their Twitter page by sending an SMS to a local Singapore number. Prior to this, we could only update by sending an SMS to a UK number, or update via Twitter’s mobile web page.

Tonight, after seeing a re-Tweet by shenheng, I got curious:

So I headed over to TweetSG’s Twitter profile page to check out what in the world was going on.

Before I begin, let me say that I have used Tweet.sg before. In fact, when they first launched, I tried the service. However, I soon left Twitter for Plurk, and never continued using the service. When I got back to Twitter last month, I was pleasantly surprised to see that a lot of people were using Tweet.sg – “another startup that succeeded,” I thought.

So tonight, I was really a little surprised, hearing the announcement via shenheng that they’re halting / slowing down. From what I know, not many companies go down this path – it is, afterall, a step backwards.

I arrived at TweetSG’s Twitter profile page fully intending to find out what had caused them to disable new signups. Never did I expect that I’d see a whole flurry of angry Tweets from the founder and creator (who also Tweets as jymster). I scrolled through a couple of pages of the Twitter history for the user profile of TweetSG, and found out that the founder’s anger was due to the fact that users had been questioning the reason for a lag between time that SMS-Twitter update had been sent, and the time Tweet.sg actually posts the update to Twitter.com.

Much to my shock and horror, TweetSG (aka jymster) had begun lashing out at people, asking them to unfollow him and discontinue using the service that he has been providing, free of charge. Worse, he threatened to remove users who complained, from the Tweet.sg database, thereby disallowing them to continue using the service.

Wow. Epic social media fail.

Immediately, a flurry of angry Tweets from TweetSG followed, some directed at me, asking me to just shut up about my “social media shit talk”, and reminding me that Twitter is a free space where he can type anything he wants. He also mentioned that it would do me good to remember that Tweet.sg “is not an entitlement”!

Ah. Right. Of course it’s none of my business how he runs his company / service. However, as a Netizen, I have every right to Tweet about it, or blog about it! Well, to quote the man, “Twitter is a space that I type what i please.” [sic]

And interestingly, he states that he’s the same person, online and offline, and that if he doesn’t like a person, he will “just whack” [local lingo for "just attack"]. While being the same person online and offline is a good thing, I’m not sure how many people would openly admit to being a mad / unprofessional person online AND offline.

So here’s what I have to say about this whole issue (and social media in the corporate world) (and my own personal experiences prior):

1. It takes a long time to build a good reputation, but only a minute to ruin it.
2. Do not undermine the importance of social media in building a business or reputation that exists in the digital space.
3. Businesses should always remember that the Twitter / Facebook account that is used to communicate with users is an official representation of the organization.
4. You may not care about what people think about you right now, but in time, the bad bits of your reputation will surface and will precede you.
5. As an entrepreneur, this speaks volume about how you handle a business, and you might want to start worrying about how this will affect future partnerships.
6. In a world where everything is Google-able (and cached), you can never really fully delete yourself. As the Chinese saying goes, Paper can never keep fire under wraps.

So I guess what once promised to be a good product is now tainted by this founder-and-users dispute, and I see many people already calling for fellow Tweeters to move to another similar service called sgBEAT.com, which Claudia claims (backed by many re-Tweets by fellow users) is a “101% friendlier and nicer” service compared to “the other one“.

BTW, at the recommendation of my frend, victan, I’ve tried instead, yet another similar service called SMSyo.com.

With it’s clean and intuitive interface, quick updating service, and SMS numbers for Singapore and Malaysia Tweeters, I can see SMSyo.com rising quickly in the ranks of SMS-Twitter services available in Singapore. Do give it a shot and tell me if you like it! I do hope they have Plurk integration soon!

In the mean time, let’s all steer clear of Tweet.sg – who knows when the founder might just delete our accounts and send our Tweets into a Twitter blackhole?

(Was hesitating to write, until Uniquefrequency’s post on this issue was published, making me want to air my views too!)

While I do understand the logic that in this dire economic climate, of course, that higher authorities may encourage companies to first hire Singaporeans, to ensure that all citizens have a job, before opening the available position to foreigners, I also wonder if some companies state that for invalid reasons, for example, HR does not want to process work visas for foreign staff because it is troublesome and involves a lot of paperwork. Having come from a HR background myself, I can tell you that this reason is fairly common.

Of course, there may be real and valid reasons why companies require only Singaporean employees, or employees with Permanent Residency statuses:

1. There is a manpower quota, which varies for different sectors, and the company (especially small ones) may not have met the minimum required number of Singaporeans in order to be able to hire foreigners, or they may have already fulfilled that maximum quota of foreigners they can employ.
2. Jobs / positions within the organization (usually governmental) have high security levels, that is, concerning defense and internal security of the country, perhaps. Organizations like Mindef, DSTA, PMO, MHA would likely have such restrictions to hiring foreigners.

Barring factors like having a bad economic situation and therefore wanting to retain jobs for citizens first, I think having such “requirements” in job ads (and they are usually in bold font, and some even in red), it creates within many foreign talents in Singapore a feeling of not being wanted here, a feeling of being discriminated against. It does not bode well for the image of the organization.

How does that line up against the government’s plan to import more talents, and to increase the population by doing so?

With Singapore’s small population and limited human capital, how does this harm the organization’s chances of hiring the best talent (i.e. best fit, best abilities, best HR dollar ROI for the organization) to do the job? And how many dollars lost to competitors does that translate into for that particular organization?

How much less revenue is the industry (and country) generating due to such non-ideal recruitment practices, as compared to say, having the right people in the right places for the right prices?

With the admirable work done by the Tripartite Alliance for Fair Employment Practices (constituting representatives from the Ministry of Manpower to represent the government, NTUC to represent employees, and SNEF to represent employers) to ensure that jobseekers and employees are not discriminated against for their race, religion, and gender, I do sometimes wonder if this blatant, undoubtedly very real, discrimination of nationality, is a step back for our society in Singapore?

She writes about her reasons for not following people on Twitter, citing reasons like their being spammy, sales-oriented, and using Twitter only to broadcast their own blogposts, etc.

Since I don’t use Twitter anymore, I shall write this with Plurk in mind instead.

On Plurk, you can add someone as a friend or a fan. Then, by default, your friend’s Plurks will appear on your timeline. However, you can have the option of whether or not to follow said person’s Plurks. That is, you can be friends with someone, but be sneaky about it, and not follow his/her Plurks, so as not to create enemies (remember, one enemy less is always good), because although his/her Plurks irritate you, frankly, they could still be good friends.

In any case, I now have 149 friends on Plurk, and that is honestly quite a lot of noise, if I were to follow every single person. I estimate that I have (at any one time), unfollowed about 20 Plurkers on my friends’ list, for various reasons. I add some of them back after a while, but some I just cannot be bothered to, for the following reasons:

(1) You are whiny. The number one pet peeve of mine (pertaining to Plurking) is when people only come to Plurk to whine about how horrible their lives are, how depressed they are, etc. At other times, they don’t appear. Or worse, they are constantly there to whine! 28 times a day! Sorry honey, go write it in your personal diary or something. There’s only that many (cozy) emoticons that we can give you.

(2) You use Plurk to spam us. Be it your blog posts, your friend’s blog posts, your friend’s blog shops, your grandmother’s blog, your dog’s website, or your goldfish’s pictures, if all you ever post are links and images and Youtube videos, I am taking you off my timeline.

(3) You Plurk 14 Youtube videos. Consecutively. In different threads. I liken such people to those irritating species on the MRT who blast their music from their handphone speakers, thereby forcing everyone to listen to their choice of music.

(4) You are boring. This is probably the same reason why you I don’t talk to you on MSN anymore.

(5) You are stupid. I am all against discrimination, but there are always exceptions to the rule. I discriminate against stupid people, ignorant people, and most of all, people who talk without running their thoughts through their brains to see if it might possibly be interpreted by others as stupid / senseless / discriminatory / wrong. Of course, said people might not know that those thoughts are stupid because they are stupid. So off they go. I might have followed them just because they are my friends, or my friend’s friend. But stupidity really irks me after a while.

(6) You say something just for the sake of saying something. This is probably a common reason why I unfollow most of the 20 or so people I mentioned earlier. If you have nothing to say, it’s okay not to say anything! Please don’t feel accountable for our entertainment, nor that you absolutely have to Plurk 8 times a day to tell us what you are eating for meals and what bus are you riding on.

(7) I don’t like your face / your personality / you. I’ve only done this to one person before, though.

So what makes you unfollow someone with whom you are friends, or someone whose Plurks you have been following?

An afterthought: Have you also ever unfollowed someone, or muted someone’s threads just because they have irritating friends who reply with nothing but emoticons?

Some people have criticized my way of living and the social life I have, saying that friends online are not real friends. For a while, I believed them, because I was hurt by someone some people whom I met online. But now, I can really say this – that my friends whom I’ve met online are as real as the friends I meet through school or work.

I remember when I was a much younger girl, my parents used to warn me about the strangers I met online. They used to tell me that under no circumstances, I was to meet up with the people I made “friends” with online.

10 years have passed since I first got connected to the internet. 8 years have passed since I first met up with an online friend, at West Mall. His name was Payton. But I digress.

Today, my social life consists mainly of meeting friends from Plurk or Ping.sg for dinner after work, meeting up for coffee, going out with them for a movie or coffee, or desserts, or a meal over the weekend, joining them for Singapore Slingers basketball games at the Indoor Stadium, meeting them at PR-blogger events, having supper with them, or just basically, hanging out.

While some may say that my social life has deteriorated, I beg to differ. I have more than 30 friends whom I talk to on a regular basis (either on Plurk, Facebook, MSN, Gtalk, phone or SMS) and at least 15 whom I meet up with on an equally regular basis. And these people are people with whom I can have interesting and meaningful conversations with, be it about my life, about philosophy, about religion, about current affairs, about the ongoings in their lives, about food, movies or books, or any other interests. With the astounding number of people online, there’s always someone you can talk to about some quirky interest or other.

And I simply love starting threads and taking initiative to meet up with these friends, whether I’ve known them for years, or just a few days, because I enjoy being around people, meeting people and talking to them, listening to them share about their lives and perspectives on certain issues, as well as sharing mine.

What I love is the spontaneity of it all. I could just send out a message, asking, “Anyone wants to meet up for coffee and Scrabble?” and someone would reply. A similar message on any night asking for company over dinner would be responded to by at least one friend willing to meet up. Sometimes more than one person respond, turning what was meant to be a simple meet up into a huge gathering (remember the Plurk gathering at ICB back in November 08?)

Some may find this extremely unusual, but I suppose it’s a habit for me, to meet up with friends from online, and to organize gatherings and outings. It began from the time when I got myself involved in Ping.sg – slowly, I began to organize outings, and then I joined my friend Uzyn in helping him manage community events and activities.

By the time my stint at Ping.sg came to a close, I was already involved in another similar “community” on Plurk.com, which consisted of a lot of people from Ping.sg too. A lot of us were already familiar with one another, and we roped in friends of our own to join in the conversations on Plurk as well.

I don’t find these friendships wrong. Neither do I find them meaningless. Of course there have been mis-steps along the way – I’ve met less-than-nice people, but hey, they are everywhere – online, offline, even in your families! In fact, there are more horrible, poisonous people offline than online! But not all of the people online are creeps, you see?

I’m sure everyone will have a story to share, or will have heard a story, about an online friendship, an online romance that became a dream come true, or about learning from people online, etc. There’s a huge community (which translates into a huge pool of resources) online, and people just have to see that this community is there for some common purpose, to learn something and to share something.

With the ease with which we are able to get connected to the internet these days, it is also no wonder that we make friends with twice the ease, and triple the speed as the good old internetless days. It also means that we keep in touch with friends more often online, than offline. I personally have friends whom I don’t meet often, but whom I talk to regularly online. How do you draw the line between online and offline friends, then?

Truth is, I’m happy to meet people online, because I can judge from their writings before I decide if they would be worth my time to meet up with offline. In fact, I’d really be able to better connect with people who have lives online, too. I said this just 5 days ago, on Monday:

And I stand by what I’ve said. Because this part of my life is so important to me, I will never give it up for anyone. If he loves me, he will accept me for who I am and what I love doing – he will never restrict me in my social life, BUT most of all, I expect him to partake in it too.

Therefore the conclusion that I will most likely end up with someone who is equally as active as I am online, if not more. I just hope that people in my life can understand this, and stop criticizing me about it.

To my online friends: Cheers, to many many more years of friendship, and great conversations, and laughter-filled outings, and discovery of new interests. Cheers to learning, sharing, and helping one another in times of need. And most of all, cheers to US, because we are having the type of fun that some people only dream about!