Farcebook …

OK, so what is your criteria for adding someone as a friend on Facebook? Seems to me that the most popular website on the planet has stretched the concept of ‘friend’ to stretching point and beyond. In fact it’s fair to say that Facebook have crept up behind ‘Friend’ grabbed its knickers from behind, hoisted the elastic skywards and given it a wedgie the like of which its plums are unlikely to ever recover from.

My definition of ‘friend’ goes like this: are you someone who I know, do I see you fairly often or (and this one’s pretty crucial) do I like you. Those are the questions I ask myself when someone’s name pops up on Facebook and I’m asked to ‘Confirm’ or ‘Ignore’ them. I’m not being the least bit snobby about this, but the fact remains that the only people I want to read about on Facebook are people who I know and like and therefore care what they’re up to. I’m sure as shit not one of these ‘friend’ collectors who seems to rate their personal worth in terms of how many friend blips they’ve got on Facebook.

I had a bit of a weed out of my friends list the other day and I am left with 31 names. That includes family of course – even my old dad is on Facebook these days. With a few notable exceptions I also only keep people on the list who bother to interact with me occasionally. I’ve got a few people from the surf club in my list but I refuse to have the younger club members on there because I like to swear. Occasionally. Also, people who only ever get in touch with you because they want something – they can piss off too.

Some people live in a bit of a Facebook shadowland as far as my account goes. I still want them as friends, but I don’t want to read every status update. This is particularly true of a couple of my FBFs – they recently hooked up with each and every other status update is some sickly love note or another. So, knowing that I was bound to give in to temptation eventually and say something which offended them, I’ve hidden them. If and when they get married I can of course unhide them because as we all know, all talk of love and romance goes right out the window shortly after ‘I do’.

Club of the Year
I have successfully completed my first year as Club Captain at my surf club. It’s a job I completely underestimated when I agreed to take it on at the AGM in July 2009. The Club Captain is basically in charge of all the patrols on the beach – the rostering, the manning of the patrols, the equipment and of course any issues that patrol people are having. Due to the fact that we’re a very under-supported club and because the buck stops with me, I completed 138 hours of patrol time in the 2009/2010 season – by way of contrast most other club members clocked up about 60-70 hours. And in a busy club an active patrol person only has to do 30 hours to get ’100%’ for the season.

Anyway, I really enjoyed it. I was shit at time, like when I’d planned to do something else of a weekend and we had a no-show at the beach for patrol. It was also really good at times, like when the Tsunami alert happened and we got to speed up and down the beach in the IRB advising beach-goers of the (supposed) impending arrival of a tidal wave. And the day when 60 juvenile Hammerhead sharks showed up and decided to swim between the flags. And the day we timed the run from our beach to Black Head in both the duck and the IRB. There have been way more good times than bad, but it’s a draining job and I’m hoping to get a bit more help in the coming season.

Our surf club is part of the South Coast Branch which comprises nine clubs, stretching from this side of Wollongong to Mollymook – about 100Km of superb coastline. We had our branch presentation night at the bowling club here in town (we’re in the middle of the branch so everyone comes to us) and the club was awarded ‘Club of the Year’. We were given this award because we’ve managed to reverse the club’s fortunes in a fairly short period of time. There’s still a lot of work to do, but we were close to closing our doors in 2008, but now we have a bouyant nippers program, growing patrol numbers and a blooming associates membership.

The sprog
This week the sprog competed in a public speaking competition at his school. He was put forward for the finals by his teacher. He did two minutes on ‘The Three Richest Men at the Turn of the Century’, in front of his entire class. Very impressive he was too – about the only thing I could do in front of an entire school at the age of 8 would be to pick my nose.