The onset of technology has brought a number of changes in our lives even down to the most mundane things as birthday greetings.
With technology (facebook in particular), the birthdays of friends and family get posted conveniently on our home page. We don't have to remember them, we can just get reminders that the birthday of someone dear to us is forthcoming. I think this has both good and bad implications. Good because there's no discounting that it is a very handy tool, automatically reminding us of important dates such as birthdays and what with the technology swirling all around us, it is not very hard to get busy with something (yes, even if its just farmville or mafia wars) and when we're busy, we tend to forget things such as someone's birthday. The BAD is that we can get overly dependent on it and worse, it seems to have reduced its importance to a mere "comment" or a simple one-line message saying "happy birthday." If you think about it, before there was facebook and these daily birthday reminders people had to come up with their own ways of remembering birthdays and people would go out of their way to buy a simple birthday card or make a greeting over the phone through a call or a text message.
I had my birthday a few days ago but before that, I had my birthday removed from the personal information showing on my profile. Not surprisingly, I received only a few well wishes and these were from the people who really remembered. No, I am not saddened by it, I am mentioning it here merely to illustrate my point. I do not have anything against those who do not remember birthdays because I, too, am guilty of that. In fact I might even be worse because I forgot my own niece's birthday!! What happened was this: a birthday reminder for my niece came up on my home page and I saw one of my cousins greet her so I followed suit and greeted her, and after me, my girlfriend also gave her greeting. Much to our surprise her mom (my sister) answered, "Tito Jat, di ngayon ang birthday niya! Fake lang yan, kasi underaged pa siya!" You can just imagine the look in our faces. Sobrang EPIC FAIL (see "double face palm" picture above). We all apologized immediately and fortunately for us my niece took it all in good spirit as she said she's happy that she has two birthdays and looked forward to receiving birthday presents from the two dates. From then on, I promised to myself that I would give a little bit more effort in remembering people's birthdays, facebook reminders notwithstanding.
With technology (facebook in particular), the birthdays of friends and family get posted conveniently on our home page. We don't have to remember them, we can just get reminders that the birthday of someone dear to us is forthcoming. I think this has both good and bad implications. Good because there's no discounting that it is a very handy tool, automatically reminding us of important dates such as birthdays and what with the technology swirling all around us, it is not very hard to get busy with something (yes, even if its just farmville or mafia wars) and when we're busy, we tend to forget things such as someone's birthday. The BAD is that we can get overly dependent on it and worse, it seems to have reduced its importance to a mere "comment" or a simple one-line message saying "happy birthday." If you think about it, before there was facebook and these daily birthday reminders people had to come up with their own ways of remembering birthdays and people would go out of their way to buy a simple birthday card or make a greeting over the phone through a call or a text message.
I had my birthday a few days ago but before that, I had my birthday removed from the personal information showing on my profile. Not surprisingly, I received only a few well wishes and these were from the people who really remembered. No, I am not saddened by it, I am mentioning it here merely to illustrate my point. I do not have anything against those who do not remember birthdays because I, too, am guilty of that. In fact I might even be worse because I forgot my own niece's birthday!! What happened was this: a birthday reminder for my niece came up on my home page and I saw one of my cousins greet her so I followed suit and greeted her, and after me, my girlfriend also gave her greeting. Much to our surprise her mom (my sister) answered, "Tito Jat, di ngayon ang birthday niya! Fake lang yan, kasi underaged pa siya!" You can just imagine the look in our faces. Sobrang EPIC FAIL (see "double face palm" picture above). We all apologized immediately and fortunately for us my niece took it all in good spirit as she said she's happy that she has two birthdays and looked forward to receiving birthday presents from the two dates. From then on, I promised to myself that I would give a little bit more effort in remembering people's birthdays, facebook reminders notwithstanding.
Entry #7
3 comments:
uhm Jat.. Belated happy birthday!!!
lol. thanks choi!
haha! oo nga, belated jat :) hindi rin ako nakapunta sa pakain niyo. sayang. may lamb pa naman daw sabi ni mini.
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