mila | random nuggets . personal prisons

"we in prison depend on those we have left outside for our very existence. without their support and acknowledgement we cease to exist in the outside world. ... and half the time the people that supply you with vital elements of life and hope get tired or too busy or simply don't care anymore." 

                                                                                                                         -- sunny jacobs --

a couple of months ago i read stolen time by sunny jacobs. anyone remember jesse tafero? he was wrongly accused of murder and sentenced to death by electric chair in florida in 1990 where the process was botched. sunny was his wife who was also convicted (as an accomplice) and sentenced to death row. the book was her story, written after she was finally released. it's an amazing tale. one that i drew inspiration from. there were a few quotes i had to write into my journal but this one really stood out.

remember myspace? when that application first came around (not too long ago) i cautiously and curiously peeked in then quickly got hooked. i would stay up till 2 or 3 am doing god knows what since it's really not that interactive (or it wasn't back then). but i lost interest when it became a medium for spam and when i realized that the profiles were more fantasy than reality.

at around the same time i found flickr. it was and still is an awesome community for photographers to share their work. i lost interest when i only got feedback if i joined contests and provided feedback for others. not that i minded the exchange, the challenge is that even in a cyber community there is decorum that needs to be maintained. you get notes like "great job" and "nice picture" that are hollow at best and completely untrue half the time. i tried to be more truthful. it's a lot of effort and i get tired easily.


now i have twitter, facebook, my blog and a list of blogs on my rss that i keep up with like my own newspaper feed. it's a little more real. i won't say that it's entirely true. we tend to make our own "truths". needless to say, i'm hooked again. i resisted drowning myself in all of these new applications after the previous experience and the burn out ... but i'm back. i wondered what it was about these applications that stoke my obsession. i think that i sometimes retreat into a prison of my own creation and these applications are my connection to the real world. like jesse i reach out to remind everyone that i still exist and responses feed my need for interaction.

on the topic of isolation ... swine flu was a big deal the week we left.  on the trip back from manila (to the US) we took china airlines.  curtis and i decided unless the price diff is significant, we'll never take them again.  we didn't like the service ... and then fact that the entire crew had face masks on because of the swine flu thing wasn't comforting at all.  at least offer the passengers the same "protection" if you insist on being that hyped about it.  then we had a stop over at taiwan where practically everyone was walking around with them and in some cases they had designer face masks on!  it was bordering on ridiculous.  i know that the epidemic was (and still is) something serious but come on!  so anyway... we were at a bar in the airport waiting for our flight and in typical curtis fashion (who refuses to be out done) he decided to make his own face mask.