Some flu and fever virus decided to make my body their new home the other day. Thanks to them, my plans to enjoy the holiday by visiting the entire Singapore has been reduced to me sleeping my youth away on my bed. I bet those viruses were attracted to my good looks.

Well, I can choose to whine and bitch about my current situation now, or i can choose to focus on the positive things in life. I think i'm gonna do the latter since research has shown that positive thinking can help to speed up your recovery from illness. And besides, whining and bitching isn't gonna change anything.

So here's Lukey list of "Things to be Happy About Even When You're Half-Dead with Fever"

1. Awesome friends, i have. One thing bad about getting sick is your reduced mobility and that you have do depend on someone to help you. As much i hated to trouble my friends, they still helped me to buy food to avoid me from starving to death in my room. Thanks Jason, Nisha and Vivian for the bread and porridge :)

2. Like they say, eating fruits can help a lot when you're sick. Thankfully i received an apple today from Standard Chartered Bank Breeze team.

And there was something else that came with the apple too!

Yeah i know, it's not the traditional red apple that contains lots of vitamins to help you fight off those pesky viruses, but hey, i guess listening to some music could help to boost your immune system too right? I'm pretty sure that by giving them the chance to listen to an epic song like "Requiem for a Dream" by Clint Mansell would greatly improve their morale in their battle to cleanse my body of viruses. I think.

3. I got myself two fan mails in Facebook! Two! In one day! Today must be my lucky day :)

Looks like my past efforts to make myself famous so i don't have to work after i graduate is finally starting to pay off. I hope.

4. I made myself a new blog banner!

5. I'm going to sleep... again. I must admit that as much as i hate lying on my bed the whole day without doing anything, i do enjoy the peace and being a pig once in a while.

ZzZzzz....

Thanks to a previous blog post where I had loads of free time to transcribe the lyrics of Sam Tsui's duet with Christina Grimmie, I realized that blogging about Sam Tsui (and writing down the lyrics for his mashup songs) could actually result in like a thousand fold increase in my blog visits.

So when Kurt Schneider and Sam Tsui decided to do another mashup song again (called the Explosion Medley, not surprising when the songs used are "Firework" by Katy Perry, "Grenade" by Bruno Mars, and some "Dynamite" by Taio Cruz), i also decided to spend a little time to piece the lyrics together in hopes of keeping my blog visits up.

Don't blame me though, when you can't get famous using your own abilities, the second best way is to get famous using other people's ability. And hey, at least i spent energy and time looking for the lyrics!

So here's the lyrics and song for Sam Tsui's Explosion Medley featuring Fireworks, Dynamite and Grenade. Boomz.

Lyrics:

(with source of song included)

(Fireworks)

Do you ever feel like a plastic bag
Floating through the wind
Wanting to start again

Do you ever feel, feel so paper thin
Like a house of cards
One blow from caving in

Do you ever feel already buried deep
Six feet under scream
But no one seems to hear a thing

Do you know that there's still a chance for you
Cause there's a spark in you

You just gotta ignite, the light
And let it shine
Just own the night
Like the Fourth of July

(Grenade)

Easy come, easy go
That’s the way you live, oh

Take, take, take it all, 

But you never give
I should've known you was trouble from the first kiss 

Had your eyes wide open -

Why were they open?

I gave you all I had
And you tossed it in the trash

You tossed it in the trash, you did
To give me all your love is all I ever asked, Cause what you don’t understand is
I would catch a grenade for ya, 

Throw my hand on a blade for ya

 (Fireworks)

Make 'em go "Oh, oh, oh!"
As you shoot across the sky-y-y

Baby you're a firework
Come on let your colors burst
Make 'em go "Oh, oh, oh!"

Gonna leave them going "Oh, oh, oh!"

(Grenade)

I would go through all this pain, Take a bullet straight through my brain,
I would die for ya baby ; But you won’t do the same

 You won’t do the same....

(Dynamite)

Cause we gon' rock this club
We gon' go all night
We gon' light it up
Like it's dynamite!

 And I told you once
Now I told you twice
We gon' light it up

Oh.....

 (Fireworks)

Cause baby you're a firework
Come on let your colors burst

 (Grenade)

I would catch a grenade for ya, 

Throw my hand on a blade for ya, oh,

I would catch a grenade for ya-a-a, 

Woah... oh...

(Fireworks)

Boom, boom, boom
Even brighter than the moon, moon, moon, yeah

 (Grenade)

 I would go through all this pain, Take a bullet straight through my brain,

I would die for ya baby

 (Fireworks)

Cause baby you're a firework
Come on let your colors burst

P/s: There's a little change here and there to the original lyrics, but overall is quite the same

****

If i keep doing this, maybe i could change my blog to be the official Sam Tsui's and Kurt Schneider's fan and lyrics blog. Or maybe not, since they're both guys and that would look gay.

*****

Exams are finally over! For the third time since in university, that is. Of course, when next semester comes in one more month, the cycle is gonna start all over again and i'll be worrying about exam in no time then but i think i'm just gonna chill and relax for the time being. Maybe watch some anime, play some games and try to find myself a girlfriend at the mean time.

Speaking of exams, i had an interesting conversation about exams today just after dinner. You see, at where i am currently studying right now, there's this really funny system of grading students, as the rumor goes. And this funny system is called the bell curve system.

Which means that aside from worrying about being able to do the test, we must also worry about not ending up in the bottom of the bell curve because well, if you're at the bottom, your grades will tend to follow. So there's basically a lot of things that we need to worry about if we don't want to fail our examinations. Bell curve, assignments, not falling asleep in class, the list goes on. Which brings me to the main point of the post today (yes, i've been beating around the bush the whole time cause i have the time to do so! XD). That being on the on the bottom of the bell curve, or the not so smart student category, is sometimes okay. In fact, we may be doing others a favor too.

Let me explain.

As students, i'm sure all of us roughly share the similar fear. The fear of being in the bottom group of the class with the not-so-good grades while most of our friends are on top of the list bragging about their awesome results. If given the chance, all of us would want to be on top of the class, being able to say, "Oh no, i'm afraid i'm not able to get an A this time" and still ending up getting an A in the end. It's true, we're just all kiasu (afraid to lose) as how Singaporeans would put it.

But do you know that being in the bottom is a good thing actually? Because if everyone is at the top and everyone is getting good results, then there will be no good results at all because everyone would be the same. There will be no basis for comparison and we would all would just be normal.

So in order to avoid a situation where there is no smart and not-so-smart people, there must be a group of individuals that must be able to sacrifice for the greater good of humanity. Come to think of it, we, the people who cannot seem to get good results, the lazy bunch, are the ones that make our friends that are smart look good. If it's not for us, there wouldn't be a top scorer list for them to be on and there wouldn't be awards or scholarships for those who scores better and higher.

Without us, life would be very dull because everyone would be on the top. And if everyone is one the top, there will be no top anymore. So we're the ones that pull the bell curve down and give meaning to those who are on the top. And no matter how hard to education system tries to tell everyone that how important it is to be on top, being in the bottom is quite important too because we help to maintain the order of the education system.

So the next time you get a bad result, don't be discouraged, but take heart! The society may look down on you but deep in your heart, you know that you're serving a noble cause.

By the way, i wrote this post as a way to comfort me after my dismal exam performances. Heed the advice in this post at your own risk XD

I must admit that i'm pretty bored right now. Not that i do not have anything to do, in fact i have an exam tomorrow, but somehow there isn't much mood in me to do anything. There's isn't anything to study for that module anyway, because all the lecturer wants is for us to memorize a whole bunch of readings, including the author's name, the name of the reading, when it is written, who's the publisher, the author mum and dad's name, the author's address and phone number.

Just joking. We're required to remember only the article's name and the author name but i still find it kinda pointless. Aren't we supposed to remember what was written in the article, the content of it, rather than if the author has a surname same as mine? I'm sure a lot of lecturers don't have a database of 100 articles in their brain too. Why torture us students over this matter then?

Well, since it's my last paper tomorrow, i'm throwing in the towel already. Besides, i have much more important stuff to do. Like reaching level 40 for my priest tomorrow.

Just borrow on the popularity of others by writing a post about them. In my case, i borrowed Sam Tsui's and Christina Grimmie's.

Heck, even all my pageviews from all my blog post combined over the 4 years i have been blogging can't beat the pageviews generated from that single blog post alone. Too bad i'm not filthy rich or anything. If not i could have ask them to sing a duet about my blog and i'll be famous tomorrow.

Too bad.

University students, according to traditional beliefs, are believed to possess a high degree of civic mindedness and morality. That's how my parents think, my uncles and aunties think, my neighbors think and i used to think before coming to university. Well, not anymore. From my past one and a half years of experience here, i have learned that having a high level of education, university in this sense, does not necessarily prove that you have a high intelligence, civic mindedness or virtues.

Just yesterday, as i was happily strolling into the bathroom as i usually do be when i want to take a bath, i noticed something missing from my "bath basket", the place where we put all our hygiene products like shampoo, body wash etc. Apparently someone decided that i would be happy with him using my body wash without my permission. And it's not the first time something like this happened. A few months ago my toothpaste went missing. Talk about university students being more educated.

My fellow floor mates also routinely complain about this phenomenon that is happening in our floor's toilet. Their shampoo, toothpaste and body wash would routinely perform a sort of magic trick and disappear from where they were originally were. Looks like it's this someone that routinely "borrows" our stuff has a schedule of some sort to use our stuff without permission.

And he could have at least put back the things after he used so that we would not know. Ignorance is bliss, right. But no, he had to hide it somewhere after he had finished using it, sending us on a wild goose chase every time we want to take a bath.


And no, i'm not gonna keep all my hygiene products in my room just to avoid it from being "borrowed". We have been fine so far with putting everything in the toilet so why we all need to compensate for the acts of one person?

The next time he steal my stuff again, i'm gonna fill my whole body wash with itch powder.

 I'm sure we've all heard about virtual love stories. Of how lovers met their soul mate online, through social networks or online video games, and eventually ending up happily ever after with each other. It's not surprising considering how wired we are in today's modern world.

Among all these virtual love stories, one especially caught my attention yesterday. The story is quite old, almost a year old already, but i think it still strikes me as oddly peculiar. Sal9000's story is like any love story you would expect to hear. He met his wife, named Nene, through a Nintendo DS game called Love Plus and after sharing many experiences together, they decided to tie the know together. There's only one catch. You see, Nene isn't a real person, or human, as you would call it. She's a character from the game which means she's not real.

Meet Miss Nene, Sal9000's future wife

 But Sal9000 is a human alright and they did have a real wedding attended by real human guests, 40 of them, including one real priest to bless the wedding. There's a video you can see later at the end of this post.

The bride and the groom

Whether this is just a ploy of this guy to gain popularity or he's really serious, only he knows. Some speculates that this is only a marketing ploy by Konami to promote their game while others who claim to know the real guy says that he's really in love with her. There's very little follow up to this news and one year onward, a quick Google search reveals nothing about how the couple is doing right now.

Looking at this guy kinda reminded me of the numerous "girlfriends" i would have from all my years of video gaming. If i were to follow his steps, i think the number of my wives would be more than the emperor of China last time. Among the wives that i would have now if i had chosen to profess my love for them would be:

Miranda from Mass Effect 2. She's one hot girl and she's one of my comrades aboard the Normandy, one of the well know human ships in the Mass Effect 2 universe. Together we have fought countless aliens together in order to protect humanity and of course, sparks are sure to fly when you're risking your lives together. And we even had sex before (in the game, of course).

Aerith would be the girlfriend from my adventures in Final Fantasy 7. Don't quite remember the details but i'd sure remember we had lots of fun time together. Oh wait, i forgot. She can't possibly be my girlfriend. Because that idiotic Sephiroth had to kill her halfway through the game :(

Ah, Kerrigan. The girl that gave me the most headache. Just after i develop a crush on her she had to be abducted by those horrible Zergs who turned her into an ugly alien. Love prevails of course, because after 10 years in the waiting i finally managed to save her from the grasps of the Zerg and turned her back into human at the same time too! Too bad her hair still looked like those alien tentacles.

Okay, this gonna be quite hard because i had loads of girlfriends and wives from Sims 3. Or at least the Sim that i thought symbolizes me the most had. Maybe i should just skip this game.

Okay, this is gonna be embarrassing because i forgot her name. I do remember that she was my assistant though when i was busy saving the world from Soviet Union and Japan. And she's from Red Alert 3. Well, at least she's hot.

These are just only a few girls that i can remember from all my years of video gaming. There's a whole loads of others too, like the eight girls from Harvest Moon, some Japanese game that i forgot what it is and i even have two real people girlfriends from an online game last time. Only that i do not know whether they are real girls or not, given the number of guys disguising as girls on online games.

Reading this digital love story just proves a few things to me. Either that Japan's population are lacking in girls until guys are running out of choices until they have to look elsewhere or that even if they have an equal female population, the females' qualities are that bad until  they are actually losing out to the virtual girls that are not even real.

Or this guy really needs to get a life. You can catch the seriousness of the impact of video games if this guy is for real. Maybe they should introduce more ugly looking girls in video games. Or don't include girls at all. Wait, the last thing we want is guys turning gay because of video games.

And they wonder why Japan's birth rates are so low, even with such active adult entertainment industry. I guess guys there prefer inserting into USB ports rather than a real girl's *ahem*. Perhaps i seriously need to stop my gaming habits too if i want to keep any hopes of finding myself a real human girlfriend alive.

Anyway, fast forward to the present, a there has been no news about how this guy is doing with his wife or whether they have kids already or not. There have been no reports too of other guys doing the same thing after him, or i did not hear about it, so i guess humanity is still quite safe for the time being.

That being said, i'm gonna return to half an hour of monster slaying with the few of my girlfriends before heading off to sleep later.

*****

By the way i've included a video regarding this incident below, one about the marriage itself and the other of the groom's interview. Many thanks to Lisa Katayama from Boing Boing for the videos and story.

 Another awesome music project by the awesome video producer, Kurt Schneider, featuring his favorite artiste, Sam Tsui and a awesome female singer i never seen before, Christina Grimmie, singing the cover version for Nelly's "Just A Dream". There's some change in the lyrics compared to the original version but i'm not complaining. This cover version is just so awesome. The song and lyrics included!

 (Sam Tsui)

I was thinkin about you, thinkin about me.
Thinkin about us, what we gonna be?
Open my eyes; it was only just a dream.
 (Christina Grimmie)
I travel back, down that road.
Will you come back? No one knows.
I realize, it was only just a dream.

(Sam Tsui)

I was at the top and I was like I’m in the basement.
Number one spot and now you found your own replacement.
I swear now that I can't take it, knowing somebody's got my baby.
And now you ain't around, baby I can't think.
I shoulda put it down. Shoulda got that ring.
Cuz I can still feel it in the air.
See your pretty face run my fingers through your hair.

My lover, my life. My baby, my wife.
You left me, I'm tied.
Cuz I know that it just ain't right.

(Together)
I was thinkin about you, thinkin about me.
Thinkin about us, what we gonna be?
Open my eyes; it was only just a dream.
So I travel back, down that road.
Will you come back? No one knows.
I realize, it was only just a dream.
 

(Christina Grimmie)
When I'm ridin I swear I see your face at every turn.
I'm tryin to get my usher on, but I can let it burn.
And I just hope you'll know you're the only one I yearn for.
No wonder I'll be missing when I'll learn?

Didn't give you all my love, I guess now I got my payback.
Now I'm in the club thinkin all about you baby.

Hey, you were(was) so easy to love. But wait, I guess that love wasn't enough.

I'm goin through it every time that I'm alone.
And now i'm wishin that she'd pick up the phone.
But she made a decision that she wanted to move one.
Cuz I was wrong...

(Together)
And I was thinkin about you, thinkin about me.
Thinkin about us, what we gonna be?
Open my eyes; it was only just a dream.
So I travel back, down that road.
Will you come back? No one knows.
I realize, it was only just a dream.

If you ever loved somebody put your hands up.
If you ever loved somebody put your hands up.
And now they're gone and you're wishing you could give them everything.

Ohhh, if you ever loved somebody put your hands up.

(if you ever loved somebody put your hands up.)
If you ever loved somebody put your hands up.

(if you ever loved somebody put your hands up.)
And now they're gone and you wish you could give them everything.

I was thinkin about you, thinkin about me.
Thinkin about us, what we gonna be?
Open my eyes (open my eyes); it was only just a dream (it's just a dream).
I travel back (travel back) (i travel back), down that road (down the road)(down the road).
Will you come back? No one knows (no one knows).
I realize, it was only just a dream (No, no, no...).

And I was thinkin about you, thinkin about me.
Thinkin about us, what we gonna be?
Open my eyes (open my eyes) (open my eyes); it was only just a dream (it's just a.. it's just a dream).
So I travel back, down that road.
Will you come back? No one knows.
I realize (i realize), it was only just a dream  
(baby, it was only just... it was only just a dream)

Nooo... Ohhh...

It was only just a dream.

*****

And i must say that Christina Grimmie is so hot! For you guys who might be interested, she's 16 years old and is a gamer girl who loves Zelda very much. And she's pretty religious too, if you'd prefer the spiritual type of girl. Stalk her on Youtube and Twitter to find out more. Links are given below.
 

As for me, I think i'm in love with her. Sam Tsui is really one lucky fella to be able to sing a duet with her. I sure hope i have a good singing voice like him too so i can be famous and duet with pretty girls! In my dreams, perhaps?

Speaking about dreams, i really need to stop dreaming and head back to do my revision for the test tomorrow. Or else my dreams of graduating will remain a only a dream. Hope you guys like the video! I must admit that the lyrics are not perfect, but that's the best i can do with this style of singing, so if you have a better version do let me now. Back to studying then!

*****

"Oh gg..."

A term that originated from computer games that is widely used today in various situations in which there's no hope, in situations which you screwed up good or basically situations that you could literally see your own demise before your own eyes. Translated as "Oh good game...", "Oh gg..." carries roughly the same meaning as "Shit!", "FML", "die..." and "OMGF", just in a less vulgar and a more polite manner.

Today, the term "Oh gg..." is widely used outside from the gaming arena, because half of the Earth's population happened to be computer gamers and we love to speak gamers' language, and in situations like:-

Situation 1
A group of friends that has just finished supper and halfway home.
Friend 1: Hey, did you take back your phone? I saw it lying on the restaurant's table just now.
Friend 2: (searches pockets) Oh gg....

Situation 2
In examination hall.
Examiner: Alright, you all may start now. The exam finishes in two hours time.
Me: (opens the question paper and takes a look at the questions) Oh gg.... (You won't be seeing me in university anymore after this exam)

Situation 3
Workplace
Boss: Did you remember to send the client our 100K proposal for the meeting today? I really hope that our company can secure this 100K deal
Worker: Oh gg... (worker gets fired soon afterward)

Situation 4
Any university lecture hall
Lecturer: For today's assignment, i want you all to come up with a 5000 word essay on the reason why Einstein has that afro hair of his. The assignment is due tomorrow at 5 pm
Students: Oh gg...  (no doubt the lecturer will be receiving quite bad reviews by the end of the semester. God bless him)


Situation 5
A group of friends happily chatting together
Friend 1 (Guy): And i think friend 2 (who happens to be a girl) has gained weight again!
Friend 2 (Girl): ....
Friend 3 (Guy): Idiot! I think you just made her angry.
Friend 1 (Guy): Oh gg...
Friend 2 (Girl): Hpmh! ...and stomps off.

Situation 6
When playing DOTA with my legendary friend, Xian You
Friend 1: Oh no, i think i see Xian You coming!
Me: Run!
Friend 2: Too late. I think he wiped out our entire team.
Together: Oh gg...
P/s: I had to include this in because that's the situation most of the time :p

As you can see, the term "Oh gg..." can be widely used in almost every situation nowadays if you're creative enough to use it. Of course, the above situations are just a few out of the thousands out there that "Oh gg..." can be used in. Can you think of any other funny situations where the "Oh gg..." can be used with style?

And talking about "Oh gg..." i suddenly realize that i still have and exam tomorrow and here i am blogging my time away when i should be revising. Oh gg...

Lately, i've been seeing more and more of this "Earn Lots of Money out of Facebook" thing going around. They would tag some of your friend in a picture like this:-

 ...and leave a comment under the picture saying something like this, "dont's wasting ur time. .juz give me a msg to my inbox and i'll tell u how to making money...=) No need to sell any product. No ned to meet anyone. ..People wil come and find us?? How? Really can get RM100 or more in a day? Come, just send a msg to my inbox now , i m looking for friends who r interested to earn more money from facebook"

Of course, normally i would have casually brushed off messages like this as attempts to cheat you out of your money, but out of curiosity, i decided to snoop around to see if an idea like this would still be able to con people and if it's really true. To my surprise, despite how many news reports of scams going on and how people are cheated out of their money because of all these get rich quick scams, there are a lot who actually believes in this sort of thing, judging from the comments on the photos.

Looks like as long as greed is still a human trait, there will still be people falling for these scams. So i decided i would do everybody a favor and check out once and for all if this type of program is legitimate, in case someone decides to Google it.

Following the advice of this guy who claims to be able to guide us to success, i first added his Facebook account and sent him a message to Facebook. The first indication that this idea is a scam would be the looks of his Facebook profile:-


The profile sure smells fishy. On top of that, he has no wall posts of any sort, and almost all of his activities are revolved around tagging people to his get rich through Facebook photos and asking people to message him about this business he is talking about. And why is it a problem? You see, this profile is most probably created just for the sake of cheating all the unsuspecting people into parting away with their money. There's no other info about his background or sort and once people realized that this is a hoax, he would have deleted his account and ran. And the people who are cheated have no way to detect who he is in real life, hence no way to get back your money.

I decided to send him a Facebook message though, as he requested, just to see how real is this money making scheme. Below are the excerpts of the messages exchange:-

Time flies, doesn't it? In a blink of an eye, i'm already approaching the end of my first semester as a sophomore in NUS. It only seems like yesterday when i first arrived in Singapore, blur and unsure as usual about my university life ahead. And it only seems like the day before yesterday when i was still in high school, worried that i have to leave school and work early thanks to my not so good academic records.

Perhaps if i blink my eyes again, i would be graduating already and entering the working world. The time of many uncertainty as i struggle to find a job and a place to live. Not to mention all the sudden adult responsibilities like insurance, mortgages, rents, bank accounts that is suddenly thrust upon you.

Blink again and if i'm lucky, my wedding day! Walking down the aisle with the girl woman i love, looking forward to spending the rest of my life with her, raise a few handsome kids like myself in the process and start a happy family of our own. And no matter what happens, hold on tight to the "til death do us part" vow.

Blink and that's when the real headache starts! The first kid has arrived and suddenly we're parents! And there's a whole lot of responsibilities that come with the kid, that's for sure. There's the milk supply, diapers supply and who's gonna do the potty training to worry about. And before long, you'll be worrying about which school to send them too, will they turn out to be good children and are they performing in school, those kind of stuff. Not forgetting those piano lessons and tuition.

Blink blink. The kids are now at university or working and finally, i can look forward to quiet days at home. Or maybe go do something that i have always wanted since i'm a free man again. Ah, the smell of retirement is so sweet, ain't it? Perhaps life would not be exciting as the pre-retirement days, but a bit of rest is always welcomed. And if i'm still healthy, perhaps i can go round the world twice with my wife.

A final blink and if i'm lucky, lying on my death bed surrounded by my entire family and friends. And if i'm lucky x2, i could close my eyes and die a happy man, without regrets and finally be able to meet my maker after a long journey in life.

And there you go. A simple summary of life in a few blinks. Of course, what i have just said would be the ideal blink version. There's a lot of other factors not yet taken into account yet, like whether if i will get hit by a car, killed by a robber, died of a heart attack, kidnapped by aliens or jumped from a building. But that's a different story, with less blinks of course, but that i'll leave it up to my maker to decide. For now, i'm gonna have to get back to studying to ensure that if i blink, i will end up graduating and not begging in the streets.

Everyone everywhere is talking about it. Politicians, scholars, teachers, youths and even my next door auntie who does not know anything about Facebook.

I stumbled on the the Star Blog section at Stomp.sg just now, when i should be studying, and there was this big question posted up to the Star Bloggers of Stomp. What is the big deal about Facebook, anyway?

Looking at their replies, there's the usual "Facebook is my life because i can play games, keep in touch with friends" replies and "I don't care a shit about Facebook because it's meaningless" ones. (You can see the rest of the entries at http://starblog.stomp.com.sg/index.php?tid=295)

Like all great ideas and inventions, eventually you'll have people who love the idea very much and people who loathe it to the core. That's how our world works actually. When the computer first came out, there are those who hailed it as the next technological breakthrough and there are those who predicted that computers would not even last a year in the market. One example would be the famous quote, "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." by Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977. Today, it is undeniable that computers play a huge part in our lives, in your lives too, i could say because you're using a computer to read this post.

Or Crocs for example. 

When Crocs first came out, many fashion critics bombarded it's hideous looks and commented that this kind of footwear would not last even a day in markets. Well, we all know today that Crocs is one of the best selling footwear in the world and the critics were wrong.

Same goes for Facebook, actually. The anti-Facebook people are commenting about how bad it is, how it could jeopardize our youth and how it serves no other purpose other than wasting your precious time. As much as these anti-Facebook people would complain, Facebook is here to stay and it's on its way to grow even larger. Unless of course some other genius comes up with a better idea than Facebook.

So what's the big deal about Facebook anyway that's creating such huge waves all over the world?

I dunno about the adults, but i think that the big deal about Facebook must certainly be centered around us youths. We're the bunch that make Facebook what it is in the first place before the adults decided to hop in the bandwagon.

As one sociologist by the name Danah Boyd puts it, youths love social networking sites like Facebook because it helps us to socialize into society. Socialization, after all, is a very important process in every human's life in which we learn to fit in into society by interacting with others and leaning the norms of society. 

Due to the ever modernization process that is happening in our world, the normal methods of socialization, such as hanging out in the malls or catching fish by the rivers, are becoming increasingly few due to a few reasons. One being that well, there's not much rivers that we can catch fish from nowadays with all the pollution going on and stuff. Two, teenagers nowadays become increasingly overwhelmed with responsibilities at school and the age that we're allowed autonomy are getting older and older thus causing us to spend more time at home than anywhere else. And thirdly, due to the increasingly safety concerns, we're not allowed to leave home at all. The world outside is viewed ever more as a dangerous place and to "protect" us, we're required to stay home most of the time.

So when this three factors come together, you'll end up with a child that is stuck at home most of his time, cut off from the rest of the world like a frog living under a coconut shell as the old Malay saying goes. This in turn, could have negative effects on the child as he would not be exposed to the day to day interaction with friends and as a result, would develop inadequate socializing skills. I for one, happen to be in this category of people because my mum was too worried that i would learn all the bad stuff outside. So in the end, i became much like a nerd without friends during secondary school.

One might argue that school itself could serve as a socialization place for teenagers. However, school is a place with rules the students must follow and students are not allowed to experiment freely on the things they like. What teenagers really need is a place that they can be themselves and socialize freely without adult's supervision. And that's where Facebook comes in.

With all the features such as The Wall, photos sharing, relationship statuses, comments and news feed, it practically brings the whole socialization process online. And that is why Facebook is a big deal to be reckoned with. Because for us teenagers who are constantly stuck either at home or at school most of the time, Facebook offers us a glimpse to the lives of our friends. It allows us to share the same experience as our friends, one of the most important criteria of maintaining a lasting friendship.

Without Facebook, guys like me, who have a 24 hour curfew slapped unto me (it's my brother now, since i'm away at university) would miss out on a lot. Without Facebook, we would have no idea what is happening in the world of our friends and we would have no idea what are our friends up to. Facebook offers us the ability to share experience with our friends, to know what's up and to prevent us from becoming total loners in our own home. Of course, running away from home would be a great idea too but that's too dangerous. So yeah, at least for us teenagers, Facebook means a great deal to us alright. Which is why we constantly spend time on it.

And like it or not, Facebook is the new way of socializing in the modern world today. And like it or not, it's here to stay. Either you're in or either you're out.