Stickyrice in Hanoi just inspired me to post after a long hiatus from blog posting. I am honored to be included in his listing of "old timer" Vietnam bloggers.
He also mentions Roy Hornsby who I also enjoyed reading, but my RSS reader dropped him sometime back and I missed several of his posts on his blog Royby.com. In a posting a couple of months ago, Roy said "I’m sick and tired of the time wasting triviality of Facebook." That struck me because I have become a daily user of Facebook to keep up with my family, relatives, old friends, and new friends. I also use the postings of the NY Times and NPR as a portal to interesting stories that I otherwise might have missed.
Since I am 12,250 kilometers from the home town back in Montana USA, and given my advanced age, I am increasingly needy to maintain contact, and Facebook has become the most universally-used means of doing so. My daughters, for example, rarely send me an email, and I don't seem to use the IM services they use, do Facebook is it for us. Without it, I would feel extremely disconnected from my past life as well as relationships that are at a distance. That is not a good situation for any expat to be in. I love living here in Viet Nam, and I am not often homesick, but Facebook helps to keep this working for me.
Yes, there is a lot of trivial stuff that crops up on Facebook, especially when my relatives go through their Farmyard whatever phases, but I have been reading a diversity of sources online now for years, and I have trained myself to quickly bounce past trivial stuff.
