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Wednesday 18 January 2012

PLAY SCHOOL


The King started school. Okay, wait; let’s not get ahead of ourselves. He started a playschool, which is not exactly nursery and not exactly school. Let's just say that for two mornings a week I will be dropping him off somewhere and that glimmer of freedom is setting my heart a twitter. Now don’t get me wrong, I love my son. But 18 months of full-time mommyhood would drive even this teetotaler to contemplate necking down a bottle of wine at 2pm. It ain't easy work I assure you.

This milestone in the King’s life is of course bringing up mixed up emotions for me. One the one hand, as I said, a few hours where I don’t have to wrestle him into the pram (a major tantrum inducer) or negotiate with him that oven mitts are not something to bring to the park, is a good thing. On the other hand, you are suddenly hit with the fact that your baby is growing up and turning into a proper little boy; and this is downright sobering. You are hit with flashes of irrational thoughts like, 'will he need me anymore? Will he still want to come and cuddle me? Will he be asking for the car keys for the car we don’t have and be demanding money for more apple rice cakes?' I told you, it’s far from rational.

The most interesting part of play school -for me anyway - is watching him interact with other adults and children in a more structured setting. For the first few days they have you hang out in the same room with your children, so they don’t feel abandoned, and you don’t have a breakdown that you’re leaving your kid with total strangers. [My partner did contemplate strapping a camera to the King's head to record what took place in our absence, but I talked him off the irrational ledge]. The King of course spends the first hour rounding up every car in the room and piling them up on the chair next to me. The boy is obsessed with cars, tables and chairs at the moment. 

After he realizes that I’m not going anywhere, he starts to venture out into the room and check out the goods, so to speak. This entails more cars, more chairs to get up onto and down, up, down, up down (yawn), and of course more tables in which to line up his cars on. [The boy has a frightening sense of precision and focus; I love this about him]. His curiosity with the other children is minimal and every time an adult comes up to him to try and interact, he gives them a look as if to say, 'don’t even try it I know what you’re trying to get me to like you.' He takes awhile to warm up to people, but then give him ten minutes and he ends up sitting in stranger's laps stroking their hair. What can I say, he's the King.

The funniest part is watching all these little people move about the room and negotiate with other little people in regards to who gets what, and who’s going to win the various battles that ensue over various toys. Lucian always looks a bit stunned when someone else tries to take the toy he is playing with. He then looks over at me as if to say, 'are you going to let this small person steal my car or what?!' And then he proceeds to hold on for dear life and pull as if his life depends on it. Sharing is not currently his strong suit. Of course all this toddler animosity disappears as soon as the table is set up for snack time. You have never seen so many contented jam smeared faces in your life. Of course the King still thinks that any food on the table, no matter on whose plate it’s on, is his. Again, sharing, we’re working on it.

After three hours of sitting in a chair watching the King navigate the room I was able to sneak out for ten minutes to have a coffee. As I was leaving I saw the King take the hand of one of the adults and smile at her with all the charm he could muster. I told myself, as much as it kills me to see him growing up so fast, watching him do so is pretty darn cute.  

Monday 16 January 2012

ORWELL IS FEELING HAPPY TODAY


I had an Orwellian moment the other day. My partner and I were discussing Facebook, as you do, and it suddenly struck me what an instrument of divine information gathering FB was. Okay, fine, I do share my flat with a conspiracy theorist, so this line of thinking was bound to happen. But if you actually take a moment and think about the power Facebook - or any other site like it - holds, it might make you put your coffee cup down and go deactivate your account. Or at least stop giving a blow by blow of your daily activities.

Now, I’m not going as far to say that it is being used by our government to monitor the masses, I shall leave that to the hardcore conspiracy theorists (that might be on to something), but it is astonishing how much information people are willing to give up to an online organization without much provocation. In fact, it is 100% voluntary and evidently, people have no problems discussing their relationships, politics, whereabouts – in fine detail – daily routine, nutritional habits, likes, dislikes, age, hobbies, fetishes, charitable donations, and, well, anything else from hygiene habits to random thoughts and musings. In short, if you want to see what the average individual gets up to during a week, log in and let the postings bore you senseless.

The alarming part is what most people don’t realize is that within the clearly stated terms of service that users of Facebook agree to upon signing, it states that FB owns any material you put on there (yes, it’s true, look it up). For those of you that have not drunk your morning coffee, this means and I quote, “anything you upload to Facebook can be used by Facebook in any way they deem fit, forever, no matter what you do later.” Admit it, that freaked you out a bit.

So those provocative photos of you at last years Christmas party with your tongue wrapped around your colleague's neck that you would never want your boss (mother, child, husband) to see? Well, FB owns those. And if you appear on the next Dateline for robbing the Bank of America one Saturday night, bet your bottom dollar so will the rest of the world. How many cases have you seen in the news when someone has committed a crime, or was the victim of one and voila, suddenly the reporter is talking about their Facebook page; what was posted, the type of photos that were on there, their habits, whereabouts and general disposition. All because, you guessed it, the person happily volunteered it.

I suppose the big question in today’s digital age, is who exactly owns are digital identity? It’s not something most people think about. In fact, unless you truly spell it out, I’m sure most people don’t even know what you’re talking about – ‘uh, what do you mean it’s on the web forever..like a flipping fingerprint?’ Let’s put it this way, to the many sites you go on or sign up to, information is data. Data is money. Your life's worth of information that is happily volunteered up to these data collectors is money to some corporation out there wanting to…well, make more money. It’s crude, it’s sobering, and it’s a truth we should all consider the next time we have a yearning to sign up to a site and give out every detail of our lives. 

I'm thinking George Orwell wouldn't think I was so paranoid after all. 

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