Avoidance mode

I've gone into avoidance mode on the internet. I'm on twitter these days mainly for the puppy photos (and the Twitter app is very nice about always showing those to me at the top of the "In case you missed it" section), or to complain about the nonstop work travel I've been doing since the beginning of the year, or just whine about life in general.

In real life, however, the debates and the discussions continue. When you live in Texas, you really can't get away from them. It helps that my immediate work team has views similar to me - at least overtly. But there are some who clam up when some of these topics come up, and you know they quite possibly disagree with you.

Then there are those - some coworkers, some former classmates - who are more inclined to share their views, and you listen to them, and you try to see their point of view, and you do your best to not roll your eyes in front of them, or jump in with explanations on how they're wrong to feel the way they do.

Because a, who are you to say you're right and they're wrong (even though you are and they kinda, sorta are), and b, you didn't have a vote in this election, and they did. Sure, they wasted their vote by writing in names, instead of taking a stand, but they had a vote.

I think the people who infuriate me the most are those who tell me they take the stand they do because they believe in conservative fiscal policies, and "don't really care about the social stuff". Which is the exact opposite of the way I see things. I mean, sure, part of that is because most things related to the economy go over my head, but GAH. Because these are also the people telling me they agree with "one or two things" Trump has said/done, but of course he's crazy/scary.

It also annoys me that I'm usually so flabbergasted by this last line that I always, always forget to ask what they actually agree with.

So yeah, I'm avoiding the online world for the most part. I'm listening to podcasts instead, and watching a lot of late night TV, because at least there, I'm shown some way to laugh at all the craziness.

Gah.

On planes, passports, and such

There was a conversation on my twitter timeline this morning that I wanted to reply to, but my reply wasn't fitting into one tweet, and then I got distracted by this silly thing called work. And then by the time I remembered I felt I should just bring it here.

A plane from India to Dubai crashlanded at the Dubai airport yesterday. And once it was established that all the passengers and crew were safe, beyond some injuries (although a firefighter died), most of the conversation online turned to the behavior of the passengers online during the evacuation process.

Every time you board a flight, and they take you through the safety procedures (which, let's face it, most people don't pay attention to, because "that's never going to happen to me"), one of the things they tell you is in case of an evacuation, leave all your belongings behind. In the case of this flight, there seems to be video evidence that these passengers didn't listen to that particular of advice.

And the internet (especially some of the travel bloggers I follow) went crazy with all kinds of "omg look at these selfish morons" comments.

And I get it, I do. When you're in that life or death situation, every moment counts, and every moment spent looking for things you absolutely cannot leave behind adds to the danger of the situation.

But. Let's take a moment to look at the other side of things, yes? This was an international flight, and I would assume the passengers (a majority of whom were Indian) were therefore a mix of business travellers, tourists, and migrants - people who were leaving their home country to work in another country. And when you're in those groups, on an international flight, going to a country that is not your own, you belongings matter. Right, I mean, they always matter, but when you're travelling or living outside your country, your documents and your passport matter more than ever. Because they're all you have that can let you go anywhere. Everything else - money, phone, clothes, electronics, gifts - can be replaced. More easily by some than others, depending on your financial situation. But your documents? Renewing or replacing them in ordinary circumstances is a nightmare. Can you imagine having to do them when you have nothing to prove who you are and that you have the right to be there?

I remember reading, when the Brussels airport was attacked a few months ago, about the Indian passengers who were stranded there when the airport was shut down. Jet Airways used to fly a fifth freedom flight through Brussels at the time, so most of these Indians didn't have a visa for Belgium. So they had to be kept in one of the hangars at the airport till alternate travel arrangements could be figured out, because they didn't have the right to leave the airport. And this is when they had their documents with them.

It's been six years since I was robbed in Italy, and had to spend a week borrowing money from coworkers each time I wanted to buy even a bottle of water. But every time I think back to that episode now, I thank all the serendipity that helped me not lose my passport at the time.

A couple of years ago, the fire alarm went off in my apartment building at 2 am on a Saturday morning, and we all had to evacuate. I grabbed my phone, which was next to my pillow, and my keys, which hung next to the entrance door. I can't remember if I had grabbed my wallet or not. But I remember standing on the road outside, shivering, and wishing I had grabbed a sweatshirt. And My passport. More than anything, I wished I had grabbed my passport, because if that darn building had burned to the ground, where would I be? It didn't, because the alarm turned out be nothing more than a bunch of drunk twits thinking they were hilarious, but I still wish I had grabbed my passport that night.

And I didn't have a hundred other passengers behind me to consider that night. So to the universe who doesn't read this blog, I say this: give the folks who were on that plane a break, will ya? They're dealing with enough trauma without needing the internet to dump on them too.

Boundaries

This morning, I got into office to see a mail from a colleague, marked to almost everyone in the office, informing us that she had deleted us from her Facebook account. Her reason was straightforward and simple: she wants to delink her personal and professional lives.

With the onslaught of social media/social networking/whatever you choose to call it, these lines have got increasingly blurred in the past few years. Everyone's blogging, tweeting, uploading photos on Facebook, adding connections on LinkedIn, to the point where virtual friends have begun taking precedence over real-life friends, and there really is no boundary between the personal and professional spaces.

I so far haven't really gone one way or the other. I have colleagues on my Facebook list, but there are those who get to see stuff and those who are on Limited profile. My blogs are listed on LinkedIn, but twitter isn't linked, and I'm contemplating removing the blogs too. In fact, my other blog, which was started essentially to crib about my job, never really took off, because paranoia about clients coming across the damn thing stopped me from putting almost anything I wanted to.

Even when I started this blog, or joined twitter for that matter, the original intention was to keep my real name completely out of it. Since almost all my readers in the initial stages (and even now, for that matter) were people who knew me in the real world, however, their addressing me by my name in the comments pretty much gave it away.

I know people who are very comfortable with having no distinction between their personal and professional lives, and in fact use one to further the other. Which I have no issues with; it's just I would never be completely comfortable doing that.

And my respect for my colleague has gone up tremendously for having it in her to tell us outright how she feels about it and that she intends to remove us from her list.

I just noticed this...

...at the bottom of my Gmail page (which is really down below because I have too many labels for my own good):

This account is open in 1 other location (my home IP address which I refuse to display here). Last account activity: 20 minutes ago on this computer.

Which is interesting, and informative, because it tells me my dad hasn't restarted his laptop in two days and that I am therefore still logged in on my domain there.

I also just noticed the new look of Blogger's Dashboard. I like. It's not as radical as some of MSN's changes used to be.

Hello people. I'm back. For how long, I don't know.