Social networking dominates our life in so many ways. I am the one who is addicted to it. Sometimes I set deadlines for myself : I will start doing my homework at 8 pm and finish it in two hours. At 7:50 pm, I’m scrolling through my friends’ silly posts and photos. Before I know it, it’s 9:30 pm and I haven’t moved an inch from the sofa. I download song after song, video after video, but I’m not really paying attention. The stimulation is in chasing after the next song or video rather than truly enjoying it. Since I spend so much time socialising online, I keep delaying things that are important in my real life: homework, tasks, my good friends and so on. Especially, I miss connecting with my family members in a meaningful way. So it is with my sister.

On a family holiday last summer, my sister spent all her time complaining that she needed to charge her phone.   

Then my father recently declared that every Sunday would be “No Screen Sunday” in our home.

An unexpected change on the road

It was a damp evening in September 2013 when I landed in Kuching, the capital city of Sarawak in Malaysia. I was a 19-year-old Dubai-raised kid away from home for the first time to start my undergraduate studies in mechanical engineering.

Alone and homesick, the wet welcome I received at the airport didn’t make me feel any better. I had never travelled alone before and the seven-hour flight from Dubai was the longest flight I had ever taken. I pushed my luggage and headed to the airport exit to find a grey van with the name of my university on it. My ride, I assumed, and I was right.

As we left the airport, the driver began talking to me; he told me that I was the last of the new students he had to pick up that day. He shared information with me about the city and its people and what I should see and do. As I am a driving enthusiast myself, we started talking about cars and driving in Dubai and his accounts of driving in Kuching.

“Never make a Sarawakian angry” he warned. “No road rage (路怒). Very dangerous!” He then went on to list his experiences of road rage and by the time he had finished, I had made up my mind to be very passive on the roads.

Not long into our journey, the lights of the car behind flashed at us. This continued more aggressively and my driver started to panic. We pulled over to the roadside in a well-lit area. My heart was pounding but I tried to put on a brave face as the man from the car emerged and made his way to my side of the van. As he reached my window, I lowered it and tried to force a smile. He reached into the van and I let out a loud “Whoa (used to tell someone to become calmer)!”

Then I looked down at his hands to see that he was holding a travel bag. 

With a sigh of relief, I took my bag and thanked this stranger. 

Paula is a 55-year-old woman living in New Jersey. She lives a happy life without concern for financial or social problems and she constantly shares laughs with her family and friends. About ten years ago, her husband Michael gave her a gold ring with a diamond in it on their 20^th wedding anniversary. She cherished it very much and wore it every day.

Having been married for almost 30 years, Paula had everything set for herself, and knew that her life in New Jersey was a thrilling one. One day, Paula was in the bathroom cleaning everything up, from the sink to the floor. She wanted to keep her house clean and beautiful. As soon as Paula finished washing the bathtub, she moved on to the part she feared most: the toilet. Wanting to get it out of the way, she quickly cleaned the inside of the toilet with a brush, and flushed (冲走) the soap away. After finishing, she felt there was something wrong, but she couldn’t think of what it was.

Paula’s heart skipped a beat when she noticed that her left ring finger felt a bit lighter. She slowly looked down at her ring finger, hoping that her treasured anniversary gift was still on it. She was frightened to see that it was lost. She didn’t notice that she flushed it down the toilet.

Paula said, “I must have flushed it down. It had been a little big on my finger, because it was winter time and my hands were smaller. I felt so bad about it. Sad and embarrassed.”

She couldn’t believe that she just let thousands of dollars go down the drain (下水道)，literally. She searched the bathroom and even the house, hoping that she just dropped it somewhere and forgot about it. She even took apart the toilet and searched the inside pipes with a flashlight, but in vain. Paula had no idea how to explain this to her husband. To buy the ring, Michael worked extra hard before the anniversary, so to tell him the bad news was unimaginable for Paula.