Exploring the Ordinary

Exploring the Ordinary

Everyone wonders what’s really going on to the everyday. Are the objects there, who are we talking to, what are we talking to, are they really there, why is it there, when was it there, why are we talking to it, is it listening to us, can it talk to us, will it respond back, do they show emotions, is it touchable, has it always been there, where did it come from, what can we do with it, does it age like us, can it be human, can they save us, is it important to us, “How should we take account of, question, describe what happens every day and recurs every day: the banal the quotidian, the obvious, the common, the ordinary, the infra-ordinary, the background noise, the habitual?” (Perec). These are few of the questions one asks themselves while they realize what they have been doing unconsciously. It’s quite a surprising shock on how this all happens without us really noticing. Like for me, laptop is my everyday and after consciously thinking about what’s going on between my laptop and me, there was no end to the questions and answers and questioning it “seems to have ceased forever to astonish us” (Perec).

During my nineteen years of living, I’ve had about four laptops and eight desktops, which sounds like a lot but I keep wanting for a new generation each year.  PC to laptop from laptop to PC every two to three years was my obsession with computers. But out of all computer used basis, laptops are my favorite. They come in several colors, different designs, large screens, small screens, imported webcam, no webcam, heavy, light, thick, thin, high speed internet, low speed internet, cheap ones, expensive ones, free applications, no applications. I have two laptops with me all the time. One laptop is used for fun and the other is used for schoolwork. The laptop that I use for fun is my Dell Studio that has been used for three years back home in Pennsylvania and now here with me in Brooklyn, NYC. My other laptop is brand new this year of 2011 and bought for my art college, Pratt Institute. It is the 15 inches MacBook Pro.

In my Dell Studio laptop, there are bookmarks of sites that I enjoy exploring. There’s Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, YouTube, Google, eBay, mypratt, Amtrak, Megabus, 1channel.ch, Gmarket, Narutoget.com, Hulu, Yahoo, Hotmail, hey!korean, dramacrazy, Express (my all time favorite clothing store), Forever21, American Eagle, Steve Madden, Viki, and MySoju. There are even repeats of the websites like YouTube videos bookmarked with my favorite video blogs like Niga Higa, music videos, Korean actors and singers talking, amazing dance videos, Korean music bank, America Got Talent, anime trailers, movie trailers, American celebrities, and so much more. My computer is filed with many applications as well such as Skype, Msn, Aim, ooVoo, ViikiiDesktop, eBay, iTunes, Veoh Web Player, QuickTime Player, etc. There is only one imported program and that is the Microsoft Office 2007. The rest are downloads from the Internet, which I probably have wasted all the capacity that the laptop could hold.

My Dell Studio is getting pretty old because it’s been with me for more then three years. It’s always been with me at home on my bed, the kitchen table, the furniture, the basement, the outside field, and my work desk; it’s been with me at my friend’s place, my cousin’s place, my high school, Pratt Institutes studios and dorm room, cars, buses, trains, airplanes, nature, and my apartment. Now it’s a lot slower then it was when I first got it. There are tons of evil viruses eating up my computer, which I booted it many times throughout the years. The battery for this laptop died due to accidental drops and damages to the laptop so I have to stay in one location that’s near an outlet for my laptop battery plug.

In my MacBook Pro, my friend helped me download the Adobe Application that is filed with Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, and many other Adobe programs. These programs were needed for my Graphic Design major. Laptops have there own ways to download programs for free online. It’s a waste of money to go out and buy $300 Adobe programs if you could download applications that you need for anything on the Internet. For example, I have Microsoft Word imported in my Mac laptop from using the disk that my friend already has instead of going out to Best Buy or the Pratt Store to buy myself the program. I don’t have as many bookmarks as my Dell Laptop, but I do have favorites and important school information saved onto it such as Facebook, YouTube, mypratt, The Living City: Reading and Writing the Everyday, Yahoo, Google, Hotmail, Amtrak and Megabus. After receiving this new MacBook Pro, I went online on eBay and Amazon and bought myself a creamy royal green laptop case, a light pink keyboard cover, and a sheet of cute Korean letters sticker to protect and decorate my laptop. I’m still new with MacBook Pro so when it comes to just fishing through the Internet for fun, I just my Dell laptop.

My laptops are my first friends to touch and say hello to whenever I come home from school or other places. Whenever I come home, I run upstairs to my laptops and go online and check out my Facebook to see if anyone commented on my wall or my pictures, I check if there were any new videos that’s been uploaded on YouTube, and I check my e-mails to see if I got any neat coupons for shopping. I get on Skype to see if anyone I like is on and wants to video chat with me, I check my msn and talk to my cousin’s from Korea and see if they are still awake to be able to chat with me, I Facebook stalk my friends to see if there are any cute guys that they are friends with. I turn on my Dell laptop and turn on a movie on 1channel.ch and do my Graphic design homework on my MacBook Pro. This is the easiest way for me to stay up and concentrate to do my homework.

I tend to yell at my laptop without me realizing that it won’t speak back. Facebook has this game called Go Go! Matgo, a Korean gambling game. It’s a game where you play against another Facebook user and gamble with fake online money by playing cards. When I’m not focused on the game, I end up losing a lot of money and when that happens, I start to yell out of nowhere at my laptop. I even type harder on the keyboard that makes loud typing noises. This seems to annoy my roommate a lot but she does the same thing too to her laptop when she loses playing Facebook Tetris. After we both finish yelling at our laptops and damaging it a little bit, we start to laugh because we realized that we are yelling at an inanimate object.

Whenever I’m home and slacking off, I tend to stare at my laptops for hours doing nothing but just staring and staring at the screen waiting for some type of chat box or a notification to pop up. Seconds, minutes, and hours passes by but I start to realize how much of the time that I’m wasting staying home just staring at my laptops. “We live it without thinking, as if it carried within it neither questions nor answers” (Perec). We don’t think towards our actions because we just do it: it just happens. Then I begin to regret being like this but it just seems to happen unconsciously. But, laptops are always there to help me out. They can be geniuses and they make me smarter then just learning in class. They make me who I want to be which is a better active person who studies and understands what’s going on in the world by searching the news and learning new ideas on the laptops. My laptops are my life, my savior, my listener, my addiction, my other half, my everyday.