It has been a vacation week for my family as we headed to Bangkok for a week during the June school holidays. Older son could not join us as he is currently servicing his NS obligations. It was a week of eating, shopping and more massages. In the end, we were looking forward to coming home as the pounds were piling up…
This was the week that younger son finally told us that he is now in a BGR relationship. The girlfriend was from his tutorial/dance group and she did drop by our home once before. Given that junior college only started in Feb, we were a bit surprised that it happened so fast. He was always the silent type, like my dad.
In the current age of social media, I guess it is easier to keep in contact with people on many levels on an almost real-time basis. Unlike pre-Facebook/Whatsapp days, the only way to keep up to date with someone was to meet up, give a call or send each other emails. Nowadays, everyone has multiple chat groups with various people at any one time. FB, Instagram and Snapchat enable one to share their activities easily with everyone.
We are happy for the younger son, but as Asian parents, we had to remind him that school work and exams come first. Guess in modern times, kids start relationships earlier and social interaction is much easier to start and maintain. So unlike my younger days in the 1980s, where acknowledging a girl/boyfriend was a big thing and parents would want to weigh in.
Social norms are constantly changing and social media plays a big part now. I am always amazed at how social media has evolved over its relatively short period of existence. I consider the start of Facebook around 2006 as the starting point and I have observed its development over the years. We now have professional Influencers who make a career out of their social media profiles. This is still an evolving phenomenon that is moving from its infancy stage into adolescence.
Just finished reading an old Dan Brown book (Digital Fortress) that was written in the late 1990s. The technology detailed in the book sounded so dated now, as they only had emails then. We have come so far in the last 20 years. No one could have predicted that we now each hold a mobile phone that is so powerful that gives us a window to the rest of the world instantaneously.
Sad to hear the passing of Anthony Bourdain on Friday. Apparently, it was a suicide. A shout out to the guy that developed food porn to the next level, exciting all of us with his food discoveries and sometimes cynical views of political landscapes. His adventures into all corners of the world brought our coach potato screen selves into interesting unknown places.
I was always secretly proud whenever he featured Singapore in his shows. A Cook’s Tour, No Reservations, The Layover and finally Parts Unknown. I have watched most of them. They gave me an armchair seat to the cultures I have not experienced and enriched my knowledge about those issues I was not aware of.
His life was a contradiction, having a crazy drug filled 20+ years as a cook before getting famous in his early 40s. Over the following 20 years, he became a food celebrity without equals, expounding his well-known type of sharp wit over gorgeous meals. He was one who counted his blessings, knowing that he was lucky to have lasted this long, given his previous drug-addicted past that came so close to ending his life a few times.
Alas, he took his own life eventually at 61 last Friday. Like James Dean, he will be remembered for his contribution to the fans with his unforgettable snippets of life. We will continue to watch reruns of his shows for many years to come. RIP Anthony.
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