The Internet, the greatest time waster?

Apparently, I have been addicted to the internet as I visit websites without any particular reason once I come back from my work, spending over 5-6 hours a day. My laptop has been on 24/7. I never switch off my device as I hate Vista taking sometime when it is struggling with loading and shutting down. Having to live without internet access at home for about a couple of weeks meant I had got too much time to read books and to go out with real friends. It happened last month when I switched to a new service provider and I had to wait for sometime. Being offline has made me realized how much time I wasted on the internet.

I think about what I normally do online. First, I open Fire Fox, its homepage is Google. I click News. I scan if any interesting news. At that point, Twitterfox from right bottom corner shows up new tweets. I read the headings quickly. With the aid of Twitterfeed, we can know which blogger has posted new item. I click the link and open the blog pages. Well, It is a bit hard for me to read a long Burmese post with too much oriental philosophy. Just my weak point. They are good. So I close it and jump to another blogs. I would leave some comments if I want to do so. (My fav blogs are on Bravenet.com)

After blog surfing business finished, I would quickly visit some Burmese news media like Hittaing, Kitpyaing and Rebound 88. Basically they post bad news of Burma. Disappointing. Oh yes! you may say there is no good news in Burma. I have no idea at all. For instance, news of many thousands of Burmese living and settling in Singapore is good news, isn't it? But they might claim Burma has been a victim of brain drain. Ok can you say a brain trained inside Burma can be a good brain at all? Doesn't it need any further upgrade? Is there any world class higher education centre in Burma? What class of Brain can be built by those universities. Be realistic. If you have achieved a quality brain, you can help your people anytime you want whenever you live.

Ok, let's move on. While surfing from one place to another, my contacts from Yahoo, gtalk, MSN and VZO might say hi, hiya, hullo, @, ~, #, ^ and so on. I would reply and enjoy chatting from a few minutes to over night :) , making me too much tired in the next morning. I am weak.

At the same time, I would be busy with checking new posts and photos and leaving rubbish comments on facebook where I have got nearly 100 friends, all of them I never meet in actual word. How stupid I am.

Moreover, I have been running some community and academic websites. I don't earn any penny for them. But I am a hobbyist. So I enjoy updating things and changing templates. As I am crazy in photography despite having only a basic idea how to take a picture, I would be busy with editing and uploading photos I take whenever I go.

Someone said long ago(maybe a famous author) hobby is one's weak point. I would say many hobbies, many weak points. I am sure I need to cut down my time wasting on the internet. I work average 57 hours a week. When I calculate, I sleep about 40 hours a week and I surf the webs about 50 hours a week. That means it is only 21 hours left for other things, like cooking, showering, reading and going out.

Of course, I essentially need to use the internet for some purposes such as holiday package, shopping, booking tickets and on-line course. But I just leant that I have been wandering on the net without destination. The majority of knowledge obtained from those websites is not directly useful for my life and career. I believe I desperately need a detox for this internet addiction.