A number of friends have been invited me to have a Facebook account in 2008, but I was not interested then. I have been spending more times on Internet since I was retired in 2002. I visited various chat rooms. I made use of different messaging software. As the information technology advanced too fast, I later even forgot my ICQ and QQ accounts.

When I was a volunteer of 2010 Singapore Youth Olympic Games (YOG), I made friends with many YOG volunteers. When I asked them to send me the pictures they took through e-mail, they advised me to register for a Facebook account. I would then make friend with them and would be able to download the pictures from the Facebook.

Hence, I was on Facebook on 17 September 2010.

I initially made friends with our YOG volunteers, the brothers and sisters from the Churches and Opera fan. Sometimes your friends' friends might add you as their friends and yet you did not know them at all. I started to have friends from the Facebook of Lianhe Wanbao Fan in July this year. Although we did not meet each other, we greeted each other and discussed issues of the day as if we were friends for years. For those friends from SG Cares, I usually added them as friends after meeting them.

On 19 September 2010, two days after being a Facebook user, I chatted with my son who was in Beijing. I was excited that we met on Facebook where he was thousands miles away from home. I was glad that he knew how to get rid of the Great Fire Wall in that cold City. Facebook made us reunion. Great!

I was badly hurt when I was first unfriended by a so-called friend. I later understood that I was a busy body. I advised her to mind the language as she used the vulgar language in Teochew. Many people did not know that they should not use it, especially for a woman. Since then, I did not care for friends I made through Facebook even they ignorantly use any vulgar language. I was glad that my young son told me that we did project our images through Facebook and our future bosses might judge us through Facebook.

So far, I only unfriended one ‘friend’ because he changed his profile picture to a picture not suitable for children. I did not advise him, just chopped off.

I do not like to chat on Facebook. There was a ‘friend’ whom I did not know him tried to chat with me very often. I could not spend time in talking to a person whom we did not have anything in common. There was once when I chatted with my Godson who was in Bangkok, he appeared. I had to tell him I did not have time for him.

I have been visiting Wanbao Fan Page every morning since July this year. I used to read the columns of “Proverb” (【金菊园】), “Fruit for Thought” (【静思语】), “Bilingual Great Saying” (【双声道】), “Idiom” (【成语堂】), “Our Voices” (【出气筒】), “Poetry” (【诗乐园】) and “Jokes” (【消化圆】). Although we did not meet each other, we paid attentions to each others' problem, shared with each other our happiness, as well as encourage each other. As everyone has different lifestyles and thinking, I have learned a great deal from them.

Since I have spent more time on Facebook, I did not write and update my webpages more often. My friends in China cannot access to Facebook, so they were unable to see my postings and got my up-to-date daily life. They sometimes got worried when I did not update my webpages for a long time.

It is now my way of life to be on Facebook.