Last week I shared a picture of a pancake vendor I discovered near the Thong Lo Skytrain station. Well, I went back yesterday and bought some of her pancakes. For comparison’s sake I walked upstairs to a vendor at the station and bought a waffle, too.
The pancakes have little slices of pumpkin throughout. They are pretty thick but not too terribly sweet. The waffles are a yeast dough and are really undercooked and doughy inside. About two bites into the waffle and I had had enough. Both are pretty heavy snacking but if I had to choose, I’d go with the pancakes.
Maple syrup anyone?
Let me deviate for a few moments to another topic that has been on my mind lately:
In the past eighteen months or so, I’ve discovered how wonderful a tool Facebook can be. I’ve reconnected with literally a few hundred former colleagues and classmates who I had not seen or heard from in years. It is really nice to be able to see what they’re up to.
It is the perfect level of “in touch-ness” for most people: I want to know what they are up to but I really am not so close that we need to be emailing or talking regularly.
Sure, there’s a part of me that thinks, “Lord, what’s the point?” and wants to just cut the ties. I have so many other things to do with my life. But I don’t spend a lot of time on Facebook, so drastic actions aren’t necessary… yet.
But a recent redesign by the powers that be at Facebook has made life difficult and might make drastic action necessary.
The new design finds them chasing after Twitter, the faddish “your life in 140 words or less” networking service. Now I face an endless stream of updates form my 400+ friends and unless I log in to check this stream at least every other hour, the updates pass me by like corks floating in the Colorado River.
The problem with this came to a head this weekend when I missed an update from a former colleague about her going in for chemotherapy this week! I hadn’t been aware that she was battling cancer and if another friend hadn’t mentioned it to me, it would have completely escaped my attention.
Something had to be done, otherwise there would be no point in staying on Facebook.
“You can filter the updates,” Facebook assures us. Well, I ended up spending five hours this weekend, sorting through all my friends and lumping them into categories based on where I know them from: family, high school, university, online, current job, former job, etc.
Now, after all that work, I have a much more manageable stream of updates. Logging on once a day is enough to see what people have been up to in the past twenty-four hours.
I’m still tweaking the friend categories. There are some people who post a lot of extraneous stuff. One guy likes to post underwear ads. Sure, the models are cute, but there are really more pressing things I want to know about from my friends. There are other people like Jason who post a lot of interesting things, so I need to create a category to more easily sort out the underwear models from the BBC news reports. (Interestingly, I just realized that he’s the second Xangan I subscribed to…)
That’s my little Facebook rant. Thanks for your attention…
christao408 
I’m not crazy about the new facebook format and I do hate the way it notifies you of every little thing everyone does, because yes, you miss important stuff. I was told you can fix that on your wall, but I’m not even that interseted to go there. I try to be brief on that place or I’ll be addicted to it and I don’t have time for that.
Funny you mentioned pancakes. I cheated on my diet with….you guessed it, pancakes! I saw a deadly recipe on another blog and couldn’t help myself. Check it out. It’s the second recipe down. http://kitchenscrapbook.com/category/breakfasts/
Ugh, I so hate the new Facebook layout. My usage of Facebook has gone down considerably since this latest change. I’m not patient (nor organized) enough to separate all of those different feeds.
I miss the old Facebook where it’s only for college students to connect to each other.
I don’t like the new layout either. But, it’s still very manageable for me as I have very few people on my list.
btw I do not like doughy stuff most of the time haha…
Ah, that’s what’s going on on Facebook. I’m rarely on myself and luckily, I don’t have a bunch of extraneous things to go through. But I also don’t read through them all. Once a week, maybe twice is how often I go there. And I agree, it’s a perfect level of “in-touchness.”
I used to try that waffle when it just started its franchise 4 years ago and I thought it’s quite good. And as the life cycle, its quality has been dropped and soon to be out of business.
I also find that the new home page for Facebook is just info overload. I’ll have to find time after the semester to configure it like you. 🙂
I have yet to be bitten by the ‘facebook’ bug n now, after reading ur blog, I think i’ll search the net for some form of vaccination from it =}; Unless u can give me just one good reason y I should let it infect me. I dont like social networks tht keep reinventing methods of staying intouch. ~Jon~
Pancakes with pumpkin sounds interesting. I think I’m part of that rare breed of folks who don’t have Facebook.
@ElusiveWords – @ezzduzit – It sounds like your both part of a rare breed that I’m thinking might be worthwhile to join. I’m actually quite good about staying in touch with friends outside of Facebook. For example, I send out about 150 birthday cards each year and take the time to write personal message to each of those friends. But I enjoy that Facebook gives me reach to people I’ve lost touch with over time.
@brooklyn2028 – “Info overload” is a very apt description of the problem. Facebook has become ADHD-book.
@blue_beau – I’d be surprised if they are around in six months. Quality has definitely gone down. Why does that happen to all the franchises here?
@swcheng15 – So now you know…
@yang1815 – You know that I’m making a careful list of your likes and dislikes, right? Just in case you ever are in Thailand for a visit. LOL
@Dezinerdreams – I’m honored to be among that select few! Ha ha…
@TheCheshireGrins – I’m very curious if they are seeing an overall drop in usage. I’d say I’ve cut back about 40% or so. If they can’t make money already they’re going to have an even harder time if users start to leave.
@socaltransplant – Thanks for the recommendation. One can never have too many pancake recipes.
@christao408 – awww so sweet! I’d love to visit in the future!!!
Pumpkin in anything is my weakness. I’m not a pancake fan but put pumpkin in it and I’m willing to snarf it down…. As for Facebook – I’m on but haven’t checked it fo about 3 weeks. As long as I can get in touch when I need to, I’m O.K. I don’t need to know that some one is doing laundry or trimming nose hair. Thanks but I prefer xanga.
U are right – u have to invest the time to create the friend filters. I can’t be bothered, so i miss out on a lot of updates.
for the new facebook…oh yes I can mostly see people who has just played a quiz but not not the more important stuff…..
and the ‘twitter’ maybe I will go and have a look……
@murisopsis – Rats… and I was just about to write an entry about trimming my nose hair!@agmhkg – That’s true – everybody on Facebook seems to be figuring out what type of shoe they are, what city they should live in, etc. What’s the point?@chrispycrunch -  I’m holding off for another few weeks until I decide whether the time I invested in creating the friend filters was worth the effort. We’ll see…
i just starting with facebook and i say that i’m more hooked with the mini games (farm town and vampire wars) rather that updating my profile 🙂
hey, that pancake looks delicious! hmmm…