The Irony of Saying Goodbye to Greeting Cards

I love greeting cards! For me, it's the same as loving bookmarks. And recently, I have read a very saddening post about it from NY Times.

Yes, yes, we all are in this fast-paced world, that there'd be no room for improvements if we'd rather rely on our sentimental thoughts, but still!

Anyways, imagine the world grows shallower and shallower and saying I love you becomes so virtual. Oh, relationships couldn't get more and more so not-intimate. It is actually what's starting to happen now.

Ever since there had been Facebook greetings on birthdays, I feared that time will come when we would not need to use the greeting cards anymore, and soon, they'll be phased out, and that would be truly truly heartbreaking. Oh no, I was wrong, I sort of predicted this ever since there'd been texting and stuff, and Facebook greetings just made birthday greetings more "non-special".

I have a thing for greeting cards and writing letters, because I grew up receiving different greeting cards. When my dad was alive, he was working overseas as a seaman, and we'd always write each other, him, my mom and us siblings. Whenever the Valentine's day would be approaching, I'd be expecting my greeting card already, or during my birthdays or Christmases.

So, obviously, I grew up writing letters. Been doing that since I can remember. I remember that my mom would write drafts for us, and we would copy them in our gradeschool pads, so it'd be so us writing. I remembered when we already knew how to write, we'd write our dad the newly discovered jokes we have. And having read the letters now (since my dad brought all of the letters home), our letters were so corny and so childish, well that's how it's supposed to be for kids, right?

So the shift from paper to virtual (that I've been preparing for for like years) somehow breaks my heart (though I consider them to be very very helpful eg reports, papers, acad-related, etc). Look the leather-covered diaries of the past became blogs, and there are emails (ha! which is useful though), oh don't forget the photo albums. We are in a bullet train, that the shift could sometimes be unnoticeable, that you'll only notice if you looked hard.

We are not yet saying goodbye to greeting cards so far yet, but from the look of things, we're gradually getting there. Blue Mountain (as was stated from the NY Times article) is on top with their ecards these days. And a lot of other things are becoming e-something.

Greeting cards (sigh)

There's a different kind of feels in receiving and giving greeting cards. Because you'll know that there is a certain extent of specialness in the relationship between the two people who gave and received the card. Why? Because the giver would be making an effort to buy and choose a greeting card, and add up a paragraph or two of message to the receiver. Waaa~ lovely, right? While these days, you can just sit in front of your laptop or whatever computer device you're using and type "HBD! :)" or "Happy birthdayyyyyy!" and post or tweet it. Haaa!

I really like the vintage greeting cards which I didn't really experience. The drawings are intricate and so feminine, though there's some kind of creepiness in them because they're uh old.

But as much as classic things are lovely, the fanciness in modern greeting cards is also not to be dismissed. The bright colors are just so lovely.

And there are also a lot of other ideas incorporated in greeting cards like the greeting cards that have music or tones. Haha~ I've received a lot of singing greeting cards when I was young, and my sibs, too. :))) Lovely. Just lovely.

These wonders! Can we just go and say goodbye to these things that made our special occasions extra special?! So, it's also our fault that there's been a decline in the greeting cards sales, we aren't buying them anymore, well, I do but on special occasions alone. Waah, now, I want to help the greeting cards companies by buying cards every single occasion of the people I love. If that could impede the virtual world of greetings somehow. Haha, idealistic much.

Anyway, I hope well for the next generation but it seems that they'll be missing out so much in life! Ha! But what to miss when you haven't experienced them? It's like how we preferred jeans to frocks now. Haaay.

The changing world is changing rapidly, huh?

Playing Silence

A just wondering post...

Well, last week, I was cramming in reviewing for a quiz, and I badly wanted to focus on whatever I was studying. The bad thing in cramming though, is that you're trying to hurry to catch up with time (that you wasted and let go), while information is not that easy to be understood as when you have enough time to, you know, ponder and study your lessons. So, in short, I was having a bad time understanding whatever it was I was studying while running after time... and worse? humans around.

I like studying or spending time in the building's visiting area because the air's pretty cool out there but the heartbreaking part is I cannot completely study there because it was so noisy, with the noise coming from the building's citizens. Result: ultra mega bad mood.

And because my already bad mood was already overlapped with difficulty in understanding whatever I was studying, I wanted to freak out in front of all of these people and tell them "Can't you see I'm studying? Will you guys shut up?!" with a matching awesome walkout back to our apartment unit. But, of course, those are just the things of the "id", as Freud coined it. My "superego" prevented me from doing anything silly, and so, certain things ran through my mind, and one of them is the prayer for silence. 

Is there any music called SILENCE?

That when you put your earphones on and play it, there would be nothing but silence?

That when you take one of the earphones off from one of your ears, the noise would resume, and that when you put it back to your ear, there would be total silence.

And, what would happen if you raise the volumes of "silence"? Oh well, thoughts! I mean didn't anybody else think of that before, I guess somebody would have already imagined that.

Would anybody buy an album, entitled "The No Music Music"? From which people would hear different arrangements of silence.

Umm...

Anyway, in some Psychology studies, they use a, I think, static sound, a very, very loud one to eliminate all other sounds, but I don't like the feels of that...

Another thing, there's a study, I can't remember from where was that, wherein the experimenters tried to limit the use of senses of the subjects and what happened was the subjects hallucinated, so I think it is not a perfect idea to actually eliminate sounds, right? But still!

Sometimes, we just need the feeling of being able to depart from other things to be able to do what we ought to do, right right right? We humans need to experience being with ourselves, not always, but on some times. So, it's really good if there is this amazing stuff like this!

Oh well, but of course, the main lesson I learned here is not being able to create silence, which is, actually not my forte--inventing. I learned that I should study earlier, especially when I got enough time.

Randorm thoughts.

Just wondered, anyway...

One Rainy Saturday

Hola! It's been a while since I last wrote something here. I just found nothing much to blabber about, but just lately, I wanted to get back on writing on my blog again (I don't know but, the word "blogging" to me seems too-big-a-word that "bloggers" (people who blog and have like 2-3 digits for the number of their readers) only get to use). Lately, I've been piled up with hills of school works, that I found almost no time for anything else (hyperbole though), and now, I want to leave some time for "others" in my schedule when I could do activities that can serve as outlets of these dreamy girl inside my head.

Anyway, yesterday was a really happy day for me. I was happy to find rest and enjoy with my family while I got to do what I need to do, and do what I want to do. Yehey.

With the intensity of the rain and the coldness it brought yesterday, the desired peace and rest were welcomed. Whooo. I pray for more of those kinds of days to happen!

So, I spent the morning/noon finishing up my reports in my Human Development subject, even if I didn't need to do them yet-- I just wanted to finish everything so I could get to do what I want to do with my time not hurrying me.

And later in the afternoon, my family and I had a wonderful snack time.

Giant ensaymada given to my mom hahaha it's actually very sweet and delicious

Spag & ensaymada

Since it's cold, our drink was coffee, but since I'm not a fan of coffee, mine is milk coffee (sugared by condensed milk. How I treasure my figure!)

After snacks, my sister and I played scrabble! :) Hihi. She's such so lazy to play with her letters that I've won against her.

And after we played, my sibs and I watched Brave the animated film. Well, yea, siblingy bonding.

Done with the fun time, I resumed to my reviewing and studied my Experimental Psychology subject for an exam the following Tuesday. And after I read what I needed to read, I got back to my own realm and finished reading Dash & Lily's Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan.

And after a while of being so stressed by all these academic stuff I have, I finally got to devour a book again. I read until 1:39 a.m., and I've never felt so light this semester. It's been a long time since I last did this-- staying up late for a read, because I barely get to sleep at night, I usually just sleep instead of reading. I got to do this always when I was in high school, when school stuff don't really worry me even if I left them hanging until the due date because I can easily solve them all in a click. Oh well, and the book just got me hooked, I guess because of the easiness in it.

What a delightful Saturday it waaaas, and I found myself waking up to another bunch of non-Saturdays to deal with, that's life, I guess, it's cool anyway to spend time being challenged most of the time, because life would be sooo boring if one gets to rest majority of their lifetime.

I believe that happy hours were made less than the stressful ones so we will look forward to it, and not get used to the loveliness of it. Well, that, I think, is why Saturday was made only once a week.