Facebook was an interesting experience. I signed up (belatedly) about five months ago and deactivated the account today. It was fun to be able to address to all my Facebook friends something which came to my mind and to find some funny comments they made. I got in touch with some long lost friends who moved abroad, and this might lead on to some reunions one day. I looked at some of their amazing pictures they took, saw some funny Youtube clips, got to know some music and films I didn't know.
Half a billion people are on Facebook. Apparently they spend 7 hours a month on average. I wouldn't say it's a waste of time. It's a kind of leisure activity, but you can't deny that they are addicted to it with varying degrees. Well...'addicted' might be a wrong word. Addiction means some sort of abnormal psychotic dependence on something. Probably I should rephrase it - people just love finding out what other people are up to and telling other people what they are doing. I did. Even if they say, "Oh, I hardly look at it" or "Facebook isn't something you look at everyday" surely they love it. Why else are they on it?
I was watching for some time how and what people do on Facebook. Some people read every post they look at without participating. Some people update their status vigorously (I was one of them). Some people change their profile picture every week. Some people juggle Facebook, Twitter, and e-mails. I have a feeling that Facebook is all to do with self-esteem. When you get on to Facebook you feel good about yourself - by getting to know what's going on without other people knowing you do, by getting attention from other people (which is a rare thing these days) , or by showing off what you know. It's all good stuff.
Why did I deactivate then? Two reasons. One is the online security issue. It's not that I am paranoid about it because I'm a blogger, but Facebook has recently made many hidden security changes and I felt I couldn't keep up with it. I don't think I'm a control freak, but I do like to know what I'm doing. The other reason is that my attention span was getting short and that my thought process got distracted by paying attention to what everyone else is saying on Facebook. Is that such a big problem? It is to me. Can't I ignore it? No, I can't. Maybe I was getting addicted...
Now chocolate tart. These end-of-the-season Scottish raspberries are really ripe and tasty. Can you see that they are glowing like little red light bulbs?
Ingredients (for 24cm tart tin):
(for the pastry)
160g flour
80g butter
(for the chocolate filling)
150g milk chocolate, chopped
150g dark chocolate, chopped
200ml double cream
150ml milk
2 eggs, beaten
Preheat the oven to 180C.
For the pastry follow this instruction. Keep the pastry in the tin in the fridge.
Heat the cream and milk in a small pan and stop the heat just before it starts to boil. Add the broken bits of chocolate and stir to melt the chocolate completely. Leave to cool for about 15 minutes and stir in the beaten eggs.
Take the pastry out of the oven and pour the chocolate mixture. Bake for about 25 minutes until set. Take it out of the oven, cool for about 30 minutes before you take the tart out of the tin and put it in your mouth :)
This is very pretty, so I took two pictures.
