Facebook Schmacebook

Four trips to the village of Quebracho Herrado, four families visited, one trip to the prison, several prisoners visited, one trip to the village of Obispo Trejo, two and a half hours away where we spent the day at a children’s home talking about the possibilities of sending them some Latin Link short termers. Speaking of Latin Link short termers, one has taken up temporary residence in our house, has built himself a little nest in our spare room, plays with our child, does the washing up unasked, nothing to complain about there. We received a phone call on Wednesday night “X is on a bus, he will be arriving in San Francisco at 4.30 in the morning” “OK I’ll make up a bed then shall I?” This is Argentina, and some Argentineans are more Argentinean than others! Thus another fairly normal week passes, and this week looks to be more of the same. Scout camp coming up this weekend I’m not sure we’re as organised as we might be, but I’m the new person here so I’ll watch and learn.
I signed up to Facebook a few weeks ago to see what all the fuss was about, and so far I still can’t see what all the fuss is about. Maybe my small-talk is even less interesting than most, but I really can’t imagine why I would want to broadcast it around the world, even less record it for posterity, let alone the blurry pictures of someone else’s cat that I took on my mobile phone while drunk (actually my mobile phone doesn’t take pictures, maybe that’s where I’m missing out). Apart from that the screen is cluttered with stuff that I will never want to use, and useful bit, i.e. the space to write in, is only eight lines long, so I guess that Facebook assume that their average writer doesn’t have very much in on their mind, or maybe that the average reader has a very short attention span. In addition, I am probably over privileged in that I can’t remember a time when my life was empty enough that I would have enjoyed filling it with quizzes on goldfish, office furniture, 70’s music, or the significance of the first letter of my name. I will admit to being a bit of a technophobe, but I can find my way round the internet, bid on ebay, buy things from various places, do banking transactions, have an MSN conversation, or search for academic documents on a database. And five years of living with someone whose “other wife” is his latest software project means that I can bandy around “CSS” and “PHP” with the best of them if the occasion demands, so I don’t think I’m a total luddite, but Facebook? It has one more month to impress me or I’m taking it down.

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