JYSim for jobless-yokel Sim

When we first started using friendster writing people testimonials was the in-thing to do. Testimonials - it represents how much the person you’re writing to is viewed as important in your life, and needless to say a good way to show off your English (or Manglish) skills. All of us remember the sheer joy and excitement when we log into our friendster accounts and saw the ‘new testimonial’ signage. We would approve them, whether the testi was good or bad, or rather, like Jun Yi’s, spent hald of the 1000 characters writing about other things which seem none related to the current topic he’s supposed to write about.

Not more than 3 years ago, our testimonials are lines - sentences and phrases composed from the deepest of another’s heart. We found joy in lines after lines of description and we never forget to re-post for the opposite party after we approved ours. And up to this point I can conceal no longer - during our happy fifth form year Jun Yi invented a new style of writing testimonials. For more information do visit Kee Wai and Sheng Yu’s blog. Both blog dated in the middle of 2005. It was in the lines that we found the testimonials to be meaningful and exciting.

However, one fine day, some pea-brain invented how you can post weird picture, animation and music on friendster’s blog. Not even does these ‘modern stuff’ disrupt our mood when you open a page (as in your speaker is on full blast and upon entering Jun Yi’s page all 6 animated testimonials blasted off different music), it became less…human. To me, those animated testimonials are like people who’re lazy to write (or couldn’t write a complete, mistake-free sentence) and just copied these animations from somewhere else. We know your sincerity, but can’t you at least add another ‘happy birthday (or whatever), wherever you are’ below the animation?

I’d like to say sorry for all those who sent me animated testimonials during my birthday, new year, christmas and chinese new year. You all had been dear and caring. But I can never approve them because to me testimonials are supposed to be written (handwritten would be the best), and not some 3 frongs singing an out-of-tune ‘happy birthday’ (no specific person named). I never rejected them, they’re all in my ‘to be approved’ list. To me, at least, a short, purely written ‘happy birthday, wish you had a good one’ is far more powerful than pasting 3 animations together.

I noticed friendster changed our memorable ‘testimonials’ to ‘comments’ recently. I missed ‘testimonials’, but I guess judging by other world citizen’s trend today changing to ‘comments’ is inevitable. How could testimonials be animations you saw on e-cards made by pixar?

I’m typing on my friend’s completely new computer now, and he’s getting angrier by the minute. Anyway, my last word before he shooed me off would be - at least try writing some sentences for one’s testimonials, not pictures or animations (except homemade ones).

This entry was posted on Friday, April 27th, 2007 at 5:51 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.