wrong lny greeting!

i get lots of sms/ whatsapp greetings from friends. and i do really really appreciate the fact that my friends remembered me and had send me well-wishes. thank you thank you thank you!

but frankly, i have my reservations about the content of many of the mass-send messages. you see, over the past couple of years, i have seen people getting really creative about these messages. they make use of words to create pictures, they use emoticons, etc. and in very recent months, i see an increased use of those self-made cartoons. truth be told, my hair stands when i listen to the screechy voice. eeeeeks! well, i must say that initially in the first couple of festivals, it was quite interesting to see all the different messages. very refreshing compared to the simple greetings, but nowadays, i look forward to simple greetings! mass send messages has become somewhat of a bore to me. too much of it and you feel irked by them, especially when they carry a lot of mistakes. and i noticed people have gone as far as to forward the messages they received without giving a hoot about what the content was... the following are 3 very glaring mistakes i see...

• forwarding messages without reading them and in the process, also forward the signature block of the person who had forwarded the message to them. i once got a message from a girl and at the bottom of the message, it was signed off by a guy and his wife!

• forwarding messages from previous year without realizing that the details were related to the year before. case in point was this year, year of the snake (蛇). i have gotten this message titled  蛇来了 from many people. this message has many 4-character phrases that depict some good auspicious wishes. and interestingly, the person who composed the initial greeting had duplicated the series of wishes 5 times and aligned them into a vertical chain such that when one scrolls the message quickly, the effect was that of a slithering reptile. but when you read closely, you will realize that there were at least 5 phrases that went "龙年吉祥" and the word "龙年" or "dragon year" suggests the message was meant for last year!

• forwarding messages from another country without realizing it. i suspect the message 蛇来了 (as mentioned above) originated from taiwan. this was becos i noticed there were some characters that looked suspiciously unfamiliar. i suspect they are characters invented in taiwan as part of their efforts to redefine/ simplify the chinese language. then again, my chinese is not that good and so i am not too sure if this was indeed so. nonetheless, i queried the girl (who smsed that message to me) about the origins of the message, she said she got it from a hong kong friend... haha...

so when i get such creatively composed messages, i refused to read them anymore. i simply delete them and reply with a "haha...". but of cos, i reiterate here - i do appreciate the fact that my friends remembered me and had send me a greeting. it was the content that i cringed. frankly, i feel that when one wants to send a greeting, one should do it from the heart. cos when you do it from your heart, you will vet and proof-read them, you will personalize them and you will sign it off well. after all, it is from no one else but you and you own it. for the above example, i initially wondered if i could also use it too. but i thought it wouldn't be nice to send out things i didn't vet through and whewed when i saw the mistake, i decided to simply delete it! lol! so, after all these experiences, i decided to simply send out a simple greeting. something that is personalized, and carry a simple greetings. something that is as simple as "dear jeff, happy lunar new year". and yup, i really appreciate such greetings, and i am sure you too.

:-)