Samuel Yeoh

A little question has always been nagging on the back of my mind, and this morning, I decided to find my answer.

The question was, “How did MSN replace ICQ?”

I never quite figured out how that happened. I know one day I was using ICQ, totally satisfied with it, then along came MSN, and my contacts gradually began to migrate M-wards. Eventually, what started off as a fun playaround with MSN became a permanent feature, and I was forced to abandon ICQ since nobody was online anyway.

Till now, I’m still not sure what’s the draw with MSN and the other services. I tried Yahoo for awhile, but quit shortly. Simply put, nobody I knew was on it. I suppose MSN could well be a Singapore phenomena, since over in the States, it seems to be AIM that replaced ICQ. Nonetheless, the main point was, ICQ was losing ground.

For me, ICQ was more robust than the early MSN. It had privacy settings, a feature which till this day, I believe MSN does not have. You could go online on invisible mode AND still send messages. It took ages before MSN finally decided to provide offline messages, and even then, only between Windows Live users. Yet, more people were logging on to MSN. Why??

Well, googling didn’t give me the answers, (or maybe I didn’t try hard enough), but it did raise some interesting links. My irritation with current IM was expounded eloquently by some of the blogs I came across, which described the current sadly state of affairs, and the next hopeful step in the IM world. It would rock big time if which IM service I was using didn’t matter, and I could simply IM whoever’s ID I had. Much like current email.

And then, I discovered something else interesting as well.

Google has Gtalk! OMG. It’s been out for 2 years thereabouts, and I didn’t even notice. Shows two things. One, nobody I know is really hooking onto it. Two, it’s so unintrusive that I didn’t even think much about its integration into Gmail. I always thought it was just another feature of gmail, not realising it’s a standalone IM by itself too. This points in Google’s favour, of course. The way Gmail organises email is so similar to chat that it seemed like a natural extension to me to have IM when I login to check mail.

More interestingly, Gtalk saves your chat logs on gmail. For a history log freak like me, that means I don’t have to track and backup my logs everytime I reformat. My only gripe is that Gtalk chat logs are by session, which will potentially be very messy, if you have several hundreds of sessions. Much like how it’s a chore to tidy up my inbox now. It would be simply easier if the logs were categorised first by user, then by session, like how the current logs are saved offline.

And from the discovery of Gtalk, more eureka moments abound.

I’ve always been resistant to the concept of an online passport, much like the current MSN passport. But that’s because I don’t use MSN’s services except for chat. So it’s freaking irritating to have to login and possess a whole slew of unwanted services, receiving spam and alerts, etc.

Google however, is a totally different case. I converted to Google search some years back and swear by it. I use gmail coz I love it. I would use Gtalk if people were actually on it. And what do you know, Blogger now can be signed in using a linked gmail account. In fact, while I have not actively perused such services, I have unwittingly possesed a Google passport, and I am actually quite happy about it. Afterall, I use and love a number of services under Google.

That’s the way the web services are going, isn’t it. I’m not sure if Google can now be considered a portal, but its slew of services is actually quite expansive, if you bother to explore beyond the initial search function.

Ok, bottomline is. I’ve been missing out on the Web development for some time. But it sure doesn’t look too bad, except that it’s potentially dominated by Google. For me anyway. I’m sure there are fair shares of Yahoo, MSN and AOL fans out there. That’s the end of my sudden and random rant.

And you know what? I still have no idea why ICQ lost out to MSN.

i’m feeling emotionally ginger and vulnerable right now. as i go outside to get my socks, the cat walks up to me and rubs itself against me. i tell it to go away. but after a moment’s hesitation, i tell myself what the hell, and i bend down to scratch it. it purrs and rubs itself on my legs, walking circles, but always looking away from me.

gawd. i feel so so alone and empty, right here right now. at the same time, i feel like the universe is so vast, and i’m floating in this sense of weightlessness, and emotions keep piling themselves into me, imbibing me, swelling me. the torrent is so much that it feels numb, and i can’t make out what i’m feeling. as if i’m feeling for the sake of feeling.as if any little bit more of emotion will rub me the wrong way and my emotions will burst, like a bag of water too full to take its load, showering sprinkles all over at once, deflating, the life let out of it.

i feel a sense of time ebbing, and i get a grip of myself. i’m getting tired and sleepy. i need a good rest, and tomorrow, everything will be ok again, in a not ok way. i’ll be back in the comfort of routine, and i’ll forget who i really am – someone raw, someone emotional, someone vulnerable. and i hope it’ll be all ok.

how i wonder. is being a hopelessly hopeless romantic a disease? incurable, fatal, and totally despicable. or is it like self-pity? something you choose to drown in, to wallow in volumes of self-imagined importantness, too weak to save yourself.

it’s when we write that we are most beautiful. when we write, we are naked, bare, our emotions raw and real, bared out for all to see. defenceless, an open book. it is when we write that we create, we fantasize, we build all the things we want the world to be. our little make-pretend, our little hiding place. and in writing we protect ourselves, curl-up in warmth, and heal ourselves. and it is in this paradoxical moment that we are most real, closest to our truth, the truth of our soul, our very core, among our words and lifes of imagination, apparitions and illusions.

i cannot find the words i need. i want to rant like a pre-school kid, but i can’t. i want to rant in poetic language, but i can’t. all i am is stuck – in between.