Re-reading the teenage textbook, I'm hit by such a strong wave of nostalgia. I would really want to see a film oneday, that captures teenage life in the aughts.
I remember a time before cellphones. When my friends are late in meeting up with me, I always started to doubt if I got the time or location wrong, and there was no way to find out unless i had memorized their phone numbers. Nowadays we don't remember even our family member's phone number.
I remember as I transitioned from primary to secondary school, I began to use the phone more and more. It was normal to have conversation spanning hours. Of course when you are dating someone, the conversations get longer and longer. A saying that has stuck with me for ages is that a measure of how comfortable you are with another person is how comfortable you are spending time with each other in silence. Through those secondary school years, i had a best friend that i spent so much time with on the phone. We didn't even have to talk all the time; we would just chat, then lapse into silence doing our own stuff, but enjoying each other's company through the phone. It was comforting. We went separate ways after secondary school. He went to poly and I went to JC. Things changed then. Slowly but irreversibly. We were in different places in all sense of the phrase. Soon we could not relate that well to each other and our problems, our triumphs or our difficulties. The last phone conversation I can remember having with him is four years later, when I was in national service and he was finishing his last semester in poly. I was on my first outfield exercise as a sergeant, and I remember having a long conversation with him while worrying about my handphone battery. Back then we did not have portable batteries, so I improvised. I collected as many no-frills, $0 hand phones from anyone and everyone. Although it was an eight day exercise, I had 4 phones and back then, phone batteries can last almost 2 days if you rationed carefully. We talked about his love life and school. We still meet up, although it is getting increasingly difficult to arrange a meet up with him these days. We whatsapp each other to arrange the details. And although there is the same causal comfortable-ness in our conversations, I feel the awkwardness in our silence. For the past six years, to my memory, we have not spoken on the phone to each other. People nowadays don't talk on the phone that much anymore. We now whatsapp or email. I have not called his home number in years, although I still remember it by heart. Actually I do not even know if it is still his home number.
My first handphone was a Nokia 3210. Or rather it was my mother's handphone that she occasionally let me bring along when I went out, so that she could contact me. The next year I finally got a phone all to myself; a Nokia 3330. It was lighter twin to the famously indestructible Nokia 3310. I had a friend dropped his phone from the 4th floor with narry a scratch. Back then, we weren't allowed to bring our phones to school, and we had frequent inspections and spotchecks in attempts to find and confiscate our phones. We just became really good at hiding them. And hiding them in underwear is a stupid idea because everyone can tell it is there. We hid them in the OHP, in false ceilings, on window ledges, taped under chairs, and even in the teacher's desk. The richer students had ultra slim phones like Motorola razr, which could even be hidden in a slim wallet.
Technology is great. Technology is terrifying. Technology change how we communicate.
Back then, the internet was still in its infancy. But we were teenagers, so who else but us would be the early adopters. We did not have broadband, but used dial-up modems that made use of the phone lines. If someone was on the phone, you could not go online and vice-versa. My best friend then was the envy of the class. His was the first one among all of us to get a second phone line. We started off with ICQ, with its iconic alert sounds, before quickly moving on to mIRC. It was so easy to chat to strangers on IRC, but none of us were interested in that. Instead we spent all our time with people we know, and occasionally lurking in the popular chat rooms full of spam message. We spent time slapping each other with trout (inside joke), showed of our latest flashy (downloaded) script, played games like hangman, and got disproportionately over-the-moon when we got admin rights, and could ban or silence those we did not like. We then moved on to MSN messenger, and parents breathed a collective sigh of relief now that we could only chat with friends whose email addresses we knew. No more stranger danger.
Although i had cassette tapes and a walkman around the house, my teenage years started at the advant of the discman. My first model was a chunky hand-me-down from my sister. That thing was a pain to lug around, in addition to the huge-ass CD folders we brought everywhere to flaunt our CD collections. I remember getting a new discman in secondary 3, and that model could just barely fit snugly into my Jean pocket.
I remember a time before cellphones. When my friends are late in meeting up with me, I always started to doubt if I got the time or location wrong, and there was no way to find out unless i had memorized their phone numbers. Nowadays we don't remember even our family member's phone number.
I remember as I transitioned from primary to secondary school, I began to use the phone more and more. It was normal to have conversation spanning hours. Of course when you are dating someone, the conversations get longer and longer. A saying that has stuck with me for ages is that a measure of how comfortable you are with another person is how comfortable you are spending time with each other in silence. Through those secondary school years, i had a best friend that i spent so much time with on the phone. We didn't even have to talk all the time; we would just chat, then lapse into silence doing our own stuff, but enjoying each other's company through the phone. It was comforting. We went separate ways after secondary school. He went to poly and I went to JC. Things changed then. Slowly but irreversibly. We were in different places in all sense of the phrase. Soon we could not relate that well to each other and our problems, our triumphs or our difficulties. The last phone conversation I can remember having with him is four years later, when I was in national service and he was finishing his last semester in poly. I was on my first outfield exercise as a sergeant, and I remember having a long conversation with him while worrying about my handphone battery. Back then we did not have portable batteries, so I improvised. I collected as many no-frills, $0 hand phones from anyone and everyone. Although it was an eight day exercise, I had 4 phones and back then, phone batteries can last almost 2 days if you rationed carefully. We talked about his love life and school. We still meet up, although it is getting increasingly difficult to arrange a meet up with him these days. We whatsapp each other to arrange the details. And although there is the same causal comfortable-ness in our conversations, I feel the awkwardness in our silence. For the past six years, to my memory, we have not spoken on the phone to each other. People nowadays don't talk on the phone that much anymore. We now whatsapp or email. I have not called his home number in years, although I still remember it by heart. Actually I do not even know if it is still his home number.
My first handphone was a Nokia 3210. Or rather it was my mother's handphone that she occasionally let me bring along when I went out, so that she could contact me. The next year I finally got a phone all to myself; a Nokia 3330. It was lighter twin to the famously indestructible Nokia 3310. I had a friend dropped his phone from the 4th floor with narry a scratch. Back then, we weren't allowed to bring our phones to school, and we had frequent inspections and spotchecks in attempts to find and confiscate our phones. We just became really good at hiding them. And hiding them in underwear is a stupid idea because everyone can tell it is there. We hid them in the OHP, in false ceilings, on window ledges, taped under chairs, and even in the teacher's desk. The richer students had ultra slim phones like Motorola razr, which could even be hidden in a slim wallet.
Technology is great. Technology is terrifying. Technology change how we communicate.
Back then, the internet was still in its infancy. But we were teenagers, so who else but us would be the early adopters. We did not have broadband, but used dial-up modems that made use of the phone lines. If someone was on the phone, you could not go online and vice-versa. My best friend then was the envy of the class. His was the first one among all of us to get a second phone line. We started off with ICQ, with its iconic alert sounds, before quickly moving on to mIRC. It was so easy to chat to strangers on IRC, but none of us were interested in that. Instead we spent all our time with people we know, and occasionally lurking in the popular chat rooms full of spam message. We spent time slapping each other with trout (inside joke), showed of our latest flashy (downloaded) script, played games like hangman, and got disproportionately over-the-moon when we got admin rights, and could ban or silence those we did not like. We then moved on to MSN messenger, and parents breathed a collective sigh of relief now that we could only chat with friends whose email addresses we knew. No more stranger danger.
Although i had cassette tapes and a walkman around the house, my teenage years started at the advant of the discman. My first model was a chunky hand-me-down from my sister. That thing was a pain to lug around, in addition to the huge-ass CD folders we brought everywhere to flaunt our CD collections. I remember getting a new discman in secondary 3, and that model could just barely fit snugly into my Jean pocket.
