Online friends are friends IRL too

I spend so much time on the com­puter it’s scary. And thanks to my hor­ri­ble sleep­ing pat­terns, I spend nights, mostly alone at the com­puter, churn­ing out (very slowly) all man­ner of busi­ness pro­pos­als, web­site updates, cus­tomer emails and so on.

Which is why I am thank­ful for this blog, and the oppor­tu­ni­ties it’s given me to make friends. I have friended sev­eral very non­sen­si­cal peo­ple through por­tals like Rice Bowl Jour­nals. Non­sense is good too. Espe­cially in the wee hours.

There’s always a com­fort­able dis­tance between me and my online friends. I can sit here, half naked, pick­ing my nose, and they wouldn’t mind. (Would you? If so, no, I don’t pick my nose when I’m online. I do trim my nose hair though).

My online friends also give me things to do: Help with research, non­sense games to play, and lately, an infer­nally frus­trat­ing quiz from the mar­keters of the Da Vinci Code. (As I write, I’ve for­warded this quiz to another online friend, much to my regret, because she is also bom­bard­ing me with ‘Arrgh’s just as I did with the friend that gave me the quiz. That friend has clev­erly gone offline for the night).

I’ll tell you what. Hav­ing online friends with my noc­tur­nal, soli­tary, work­ing hours sure makes up for not hav­ing col­leagues in the con­ven­tional sense. (Plus you can chat half-naked).

In Real Life 

Da Vinci update: I’ve cracked it. With a lit­tle (a lot actu­ally, I had given up at the sec­ond last stage) help from the friend that for­warded it to me. Is nosso hard!