Monday 17 August 2009

Connected and Disconnected at the same time

I just came back from my first family vacation with my husband and child. I've been to Bali several times, if not many; but this trip has been one of the most interesting. We stayed in a villa in Ubud, owned by my Distant Aunt and her Family, from Europe. It was a remote villa like 10-15 minutes from Ubud center, was located next to a river, a paddy field and a .... duck farm. The view was breathtaking. And it was properly prepared for enjoying the scenery: there wasn't any house phone, there wasn't any television (but it has a CD player), there wasn't any computer and there wasn't any phone signal when you need it. When I went there before, I got jaded and ended up asking someone to drive me to the centre for an internet cafe, everyday.

But now, I have a daughter, which means I can not jump on a motorcycle and hastily ask someone to drive me to find internet and leave my baby crying for her milk. So this time, before I arrived on the villa 7 days ago, I took a deep breath and prepared myself to do some 'digital detox' in my own way. The first couple of hours were the most difficult. Both me and my husband checked our phone so often, tried searching for a wi-fi connection, played with my daughter for a couple of hours and then got bored. And during dinner time in a Resto in Ubud Centre I cannot helped myself to search for an internet cafe. I sneaked out and checked my email. No important messages have arrived, but I felt good after doing it. I just felt connected to the world.

But after that, I continued my dinner and began thinking about it. How stupid I was? This was supposed to be a vacation, a place for relaxation? Why should I worry about the outside world? Why should I be worried about being disconnected to the rest of the world? And that moment I decided to get connected to the 'real world' and disconnected from the 'online' world.

Technology brings us closer indeed. I remember I used to send recording cassettes of my twaddle talks to my grandma via post mail, which could take a couple of weeks to reach her. Now, just five minutes after making video of my Rania's first steps, I could easily upload it to Facebook and my mom could easily watch the video in less than 10 minutes after it was made. Technology made us connected to each other easily, but also made us disconnected to nature and life as well. With the rapid movement of technology that surrounds our lives every day, sometimes we just forgot how life was like before it exists. So now, I'm gonna return to enjoying life before technology exists. I'm gonna smell the wind, gonna taste the food and I'm gonna see people, real people. So if you cannot reach me sometimes, well, just let me do my 'disconnected' moment for a while, OK?


 

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Ha ha ha .... so true. Sounds like a title to a "I love you but I hate you" song.