Shaking off addictions...

Yeah right... a hundred and forty characters are not enough for me... but it seems I never use any characters at all to update this blog, or the one in Spanish. I have many things going through my mind all the time that I want to post here, but never take the time. Who cares anyway? Haha..

Twitter is about three years old but I think this year it has changed the way we communicate. If we are, for example watching an award show, like the famous (or infamous) MTV awards, you go there first to get reactions from the search timeline or share what you think. It's as if you were watching it along with a huge group of people... But it is also as if you were talking to deaf people... or as if everybody was talking at the same time... It lacks feedback, you don't know who is reading or anything.


An exception was what I felt when I was watching the famous (or infamous) Juanes concert in Cuba.. the nice thing was that there were people from many latin-american countries, united for a cause: peace, and if felt great.

This pop culture communication thingy is really time-consuming and addictive. I had to take my CPA exam early October, and the weeks before, I had to literally use all my will power to avoid checking out Facebook or Twitter. In fact, the week before I didn't log in at all, which was a victory for me. Lately I try to log in briefly once or twice a day.

Every other day I hear from my mom back in Ecuador about all the emails regarding the dangers with Facebook accounts, who knows, maybe they are right. I only add people I know, or that at least I have gotten to know in one point in time. So far I have to say that thanks to Facebook, I had the most fun mini-reunion early September with my school friends from Ecuador that now live in the States. We met in Miami and had a blast.. I've also had reunions with cousins and relatives I hadn't seen in years. The point is that if you don't spend that much time in Facebook, and you get actual 'physical' reunions or phone calls, it mustn't be that bad...

The other day I posted two photos of my sister's sixth grade class, and tagged two or three of her classmates that I have in my 'friends' list. They in turn started tagging everybody else, and in two days there were around a hundred comments below that picture. I didn't really mind having my e-mail account full of comments, because I enjoyed them too. I was just two years younger than them and had very similar experiences. The fact is, they got in touch with classmates that they hadn't seen since Elementary School, and organized a reunion in Guayaquil close to Christmas... Isn't that awesome? I invited myself to the celebration and offered to be the photographer.. haha

Speaking about my sister and Facebook, she lives in Brazil and when she got those scary emails, deleted everything from her account, although she still has it open. She never comments or anything. The other day I called her, we hadn't talked for a month, but she knew everything I was up to. It seems as if she even reads comment number 15 in some of my status updates. (I don't normally get that many comments, but when I do, it seems she reads them all.)



Twitter is a whole different story; most people use it to follow famous people, artists, etc. At least that is what I do. And although it's a lot of fun, it's also hmmm yeah.. shallow and senseless. I am one of those ridiculous middle aged Taylor Swift fans.. and had a lot of fun just reading all the reactions after the MTV event. The week she didn't write after the Kanye issue, was one of the longest in history (haha) I used to check the @taylorswift13 timeline, and read how her fans begged her to write because they were so used to knowing what she was doing every day.. Isn't that crazy? But true, I missed her tweets also. (Guess it's 'crazier' to waste my time reading other people's reactions). Then they started following her band members, who are really talented, and fun, just to be able to know what she was up to. (Yeah I was already following them before that happened).

Oh and I know there are thousands of middle aged Taylor Swift fans because I have been to two of her concerts. The first in March in Houston and the other one in Dallas in late September (I somehow enjoyed the first a lot more, no stages and costumes but it was better). It sounded funny when the other day I was talking on the phone with a cousin who lives in Ecuador. It was her birthday (which I remembered thanks to Facebook) and I told her that I had gone to the Dallas concert with my cousin and my 5 year old niece, and that we both liked her. She laughed.. an artist that you and your niece like??? Well... Yeah...

Even though I still enjoy country and TS's music, I am in a detox period now, listening to a lot of Latin Pop, Alternative (the poppy ones, I think that is my favorite genre of music, but I mean it, not the heavy ones), rock, etc. It's a lot of fun... It's exciting that some of my favorite Latin artists are releasing their albums soon (Shakira, Juanes, Alejandro Sanz) and Nelly Furtado released an album, which I love, entirely in Spanish!. And now I need to go, I have another exam ahead, hopefully I'll do better this time at shaking off addictions.