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October 18, 2006
Guitar Guy
Most days on my daily commute to school, I see him, jumping metro carriages every two stations, toting his guitar and his paper cup with change. He's probably my age, South-American looks, long dark hair tied into a ponytail; sometimes he looks sad or nostalgic but his voice always carries clearly, floating across the carriage, above the din of the train travelling on rails in the underground.
His eastern border on the green line is Lambrate FS, my stop, and he would exit the northeast-bound train, cross the platform and catch the train going back into town. In the other direction, I've seen him as far as Porta Genova station, also my stop.
The thing that drives me a little bit crazy about him is that he's always either singing "La Bamba" or "Guantanamera". Just those two numbers. Nothing else. Or at least, I haven't heard him sing any other tunes. It's getting to the point of recognition when I put a coin into his cup and we'd smile, nod, an acknowledgement of presence, and I swear he looks embarrassed sometimes, as if thinking, "Oh, she heard me sing that song, again..."
Anyway. I haven't spotted him since school started. I hope he's okay.
Posted by Yasmina at 12:10 PM
October 09, 2006
Trespassers of Social Boundaries
Referring to this post of mine, I ponder upon ideas of social boundaries and its trespassers in online communication channels.
In response to the above post, A talks about giving 3 strikes before they're out... My good friend, M, once talked about only continuing friendships only with people who keep up the same effort and block out the others... My final project talks about the emerging behavior of scopophilia (combination of voyeurism and exhibitionism) in social networking and developing solutions for revealing, concealing and camouflage: opening up, closing and hiding communication windows.
All deal in some ways with trespassers of social boundaries...
The more I analyse it, the more rules and exceptions I come up with in social interaction, specifically in my case of last week: like, I don't expect a reply when I send out a mass email with general news or so, but I expect something when it is an individual email with specific personal questions.
Also, if the online relationship mirrors the offline relationship, upon which the online contact is based, I tend to be more forgiving. For example, my friend L is terrible at returning calls when we were living in the same city, so it's OK if he doesn't reply to my message now that we're in different countries. But when it's someone who is dependable and constant with the offline relationship, and their online behavior is the opposite, I become puzzled and stumped. Especially with the ease of emails/Flickr/IM these days, it's easier to offend by a non-reaction.
During the Applied Dreams workshop this year, one of the teams came up with a project on Social Boundaries, certain rules that apply and get broken. Shame I can't find it as reference for now, but if I find it, I'll link it.
OK, back to the project drawing board.
Posted by Yasmina at 10:31 PM
October 03, 2006
Herd. It could sound like 'Hurt'.
Jillian is probably a pro at analysing this kind of thing. I'm just beating myself up on why some of the people I knew back in the Netherlands haven't replied to my emails. Even with all the easy communication channels, there's been no initiation from the other side. Amazing. In a really weird and pathetic way.
Forget asynchronous communication; this is like person-to-brick-wall communication. Maybe they've got that whole swarm, herd behaviour going on: once I'm out of their immediate circle and vicinity, they go and herd elsewhere.
Posted by Yasmina at 04:20 PM
