...priceless vox pop

I think this lady speaks for a lot of us...

...the blogger of doom

Well the planet certainly is having a big of a yawn and stretch at the moment. Major earthquakes in Indonesia, a tsunami Polynesia, floods in India, a typhoon in the Philippines. It's almost as if the earth is trying to shrug of the itchy parasite that is the human race.

I've been to Padang, and stayed in that big hotel that is now just rubble. In fact many of the places I've visited at in Indonesia have suffered complete devastation after I left.

• Padang, West Sumatra, September 2009 - Major earthquake. Major landslides around nearby crater lakes. >1,500 dead.

• Sibolga, North Sumatra, December 2004 - Boxing day tsunami destroys the town. ~240,000 killed
  

• Bukit Lawang, North Sumatra, November 2003 - Flash flood destroys village. 239 dead.

• Cianjur, West Java, September 2009 - Earthquake and landslides. 86 dead.

• Pangandaran, West Java, July 2006 - 7.7 magnitude earthquake and tsunami destroys fishing village. 668 killed.

• Kuta, Bali, October 2002 and 2005 - Dual terrorist bombings kill 225.

• Yogyakarta, Central Java, May 2006 - 6.3 magnitude earthquake, 5,782 dead.

• Medan, North Sumatra, September 2005 - Mandala Airlines 737 crashes in the city enroute to Jakarta, killing 144 people. I caught the same flight a few years earlier.

Spooky. Don't invite me around to your place for dinner. If I am some sort of a cosmic lightning rod, I'd stay away from Lombok, the Gili Islands, southern British Columbia and San Francisco for a few years, though I think the real moral of the story is that Indonesia is a dicey place to live at the best of times. Poor buggers.

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...f*c*book

I'm not a Facebook junkie but I do see it's appeal. It seems less cold than sending emails and you can keep an eye on your friends' activities, if they are also into Facebook.... assuming that you actually give a toss about them.

I do use it a few times a week however and I'm starting to feel a little bit uncomfortable in my own skin, aside from the fact that in the Legal Terms & Conditions that everyone agrees to without reading when they sign up says that apparently I and all my friends and personal information are now the property of Facebook and that the only recourse I have involves spending 'Damnation in Hades' and something about filling my mouth in with cement.

I'm relatively fine with that. What I'm not sure about is my ex girlfriend now wanting to be my friend after dumping me seven years ago, (but she's a family friend, so I guess some degree of contact in inevitable). Or weirdo, long-lost relations inlaw wanting a cut of the 'action'. I haven't even met some of these people and from what I've heard, I don't want to! Or friends of the family that you don't particularly like. Just because I've had lunch with you at Aunty Beryl's house doesn't automatically mean I want to be your friend. Or my police officer inlaw, when me and my friends come from a strictly non-policeperson background. I don't want my police officer inlaw snooping around me and my friends' shenanigans, not that we actually do 'shenanigans' anymore, but I'd like to keep the door open.

What should I do?

Should I...

a) remove all of my personal information, photos, status, etc, change my name to Enigmah (with a silent "h" to make it more enigmatic), have extensive plastic surgery, move to the mountains of Ecuador, live with a group of exiled guachos and visit Facebook once a year for the purpose of 'keeping up appearances'?

b) go and see a psychotherapist about my acute paranoia?

c) not worry about it? Befriend everyone except convicted mass murderers and then completely ignore them?

d) not get romantically involved with friends of the family ever again?

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...conundrum

So one of my colleagues that sits next to me eats peanut butter toast everyday for morning tea. He eats it at his desk and the smell is very overpowering and lingers for ages. Its weird because I like eating peanut butter toast, but I don't like smelling it, unless I'm about to eat it too. Only trouble is that I'm on a diet, and peanut butter toast is one of the things I need to avoid snacking on daily, so its kind of like a tease.

Despite being a generally nice guy, I think he is being bit inconsiderate. Or am I just being a bit precious? Should I say something, or should I just let it slide?

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