When I grow up I wanna be a cyberdolly!

I'm on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and YouTube. I've got a blog and a website, and five email addresses. I'm also a bit of a text fiend. But am I losing touch with reality?


Reality. Remember? Talking to other people face to face, or writing them a letter that folds into an envelope with stamp and mail? Getting your hands and knees dirty in the garden. Getting grass stains on your white trousers because you sat in the park at lunch...


Are we still real or are we turning into cyber versions of ourselves? Some people are getting a divorce on the grounds that their partner is in a "relationship" with someone else on one of those sites where you can create an alterego. How real is that? Is it that different from fantasising?

Where do we draw the line?

Maybe it's a question of balance. A friend of mine (she created the amazing set of my one woman show last year) just lost her entire email history for the last 10 years when her Yahoo account was deleted. Should so much of ourselves be invested in the ether, and entrusted to remote servers?

Well, it's convenient. Having a portable life that fits in your pocket. Everything is a click away. All your memories and experiences available at the click of a button or the swivel of the round thingy on the IPod. Life on the go. Life as take away.


Maybe some of the time. But do I want my life "to go" or do I want the option to sit for a leisurely 6 course meal without worrying about a restaurant's second sitting policy? Do I want finger food every day? Or would I like to use a knife and fork, chopsticks, and on special occasions those fancy fish knives and other exotic bits of cutlery that you find in a proper silverware set?

And that's not even counting gaming and other interactive pursuits.

Is the cyber version of ourselves enriching itself at the expense of our real selves? Does every minute spent on Twitter reduce our real life experience by the same amount?

What about all those "real time" applications? Is time real in cyberspace?

Who do I want to be? The imperfect one, made of flesh and blood, with all the limitations that entails, or the cyber version of me edited as I choose to present to the global internet community? What's a better sign of popularity: one real friend or 100 FaceBook friends?

What if people like cyber me more than real me?

In the meantime, I have an audition coming up for a French speaking part in a Polish bank commercial.

I should be so lucky!

Last night I met up with some long lost friends.

Classmates from my years at the Lycee (that's High School or Secondary School to you non-Continentals). These people were my best friends - before we all spread our wings and disappeared around the world.

I'd lost touch with everybody. I'm good at that. I don't like looking back as a rule, I'd rather move forward. A bit like notebooks. I like a pristine new notebook. The promise the unsullied pages hold. Old photo albums make me cringe. I don't hoard stuff.

And then through Facebook (I know, I know) we slowly found each other again. And a bunch of us met up in London last night (having travelled from Autralia, Denmark, Holland, France, and Norway to be there - and a few of us from London). In a nice little unassuming Turkish restaurant behind Warren Street.

I didn't know what to expect. Mostly I worried that I wouldn't fit in. What would they think of me now? How would I deal with plates of Mezze? The element of surprise was removed thanks to profile pictures on Facebook. Strangely, very few of us looked any different. And it was like no time had gone by at all. We picked up where we'd left off really. And the food was fine - although I overdid it slightly (a lot) on the pitta bread front...

Which is a sign of true friendship. (Picking up where we left off... not stuffing my face with pitta bread.)

So how did it go? It was lovely! Catching-up is nice. It's safe too. Like watching action films on the telly. You can get involved with the story but you won't get hurt.

They are really the most wonderful group of people! I'd forgotten how warm and generous they all were, and how much they seem to care about me. I felt welcomed and loved. And more importantly liked. Because you can love people but not like them...

I discovered that most of them have children. Around the 6-7 year old mark. Like they suddenly decided to fall pregnant at the same time without realising it. Like long lost twins! Synchronised biological clocks. That made me feel a lot younger than the rest. As if being parents made them adults, whereas I was still - what? - an adolescent? Hardly! So what then? A child? Maybe... more like someone with her whole life ahead of her. Which is the definition of a child... but has nothing to do with age. It's about the opportunity. And freedom.

I felt like I had made the right life choices. That I was in a good place. AM in a good place. That I wouldn't change anything for the world. Because every step I have taken has led me to where I am today, this morning. And it is a good place. Sitting on the red sofa, looking out the large window, typing my blog, listening to the building work going on across the street, watching the morning mist burning up in the sunshine.

I am a lucky girl, born under a lucky star. My life is good. And I can step out into the sunshine, my head held up high, and a smile dancing on my lips. Today is a lucky day, as every day is, in my lucky life.

Now - off to my meeting before I break into a Kylie song and dance...

Will you still love me when I'm old?

In less than 6 hours, I will be a whole year older. It's like travelling through a worm hole.

I've had a busy last day as it were. My own personal new year's eve. Packing in as much as I could before the new dawn. Work on my website, work on the script, background research for the script, shopping for my birthday dinner (I'm not cooking it), shopping for Friday's dinner party (it's not a birthday party so don't feel bad). And reconnecting with long lost friends from the Lycee on Facebook.

There's nothing like a bunch of other people your own age to make you realise how different your life could have been. Most of my school friends are married, most have children (at least 2), most do not live in their home country (I went to an international school). None of them seem to be actors. Some look the same they did back then. Some look completely different. Some haven't aged at all. Some are doing exactly what I expected them to do. Some have mellowed. Some still have the same crushes. Funny. Underneath it all, people don't change.

The other ironic thing I've noticed is that with time, we mellow, and time and distance create a bond. Sometimes we're just glad to reconnect with a time in our lives when we were full of hormones and dreams. I went to a very special school, run by a very special very eccentric very individual and dedicated man. His name was Dr. Scherer. And my class was quite exceptional. Some fantastically talented individuals.And great teachers. It's just so nice to reconnect with some of that. A nice birthday present as it were.

Here's to tomorrow and a new day, a new year.

Here's to new beginnings

Is two really better than one?

You see all sorts on the internet (especially when you're not busy with loads of auditions or doing your taxes). And dismiss most of it instantly. But this headline really caught my eye and my imagination. I think it was an ad on Facebook. I've seen it before, in different guises: the Hollywood diet, the diet of the stars, the diet of the supermodels etc.... It keeps coming up on my page, maybe they've earmarked me as a fatty! Now how would they do that? I don't know. Maybe they can deduce my body mass from the pressure that I put on individual keys on my computer keyboard. Is that paranoid enough for you?

Anyway, this headline was different. It went something like: "How combining 2 diets will help you lose weight twice as fast." And I have to say, that for a moment, I though: EUREKA! Then I thought about it a bit more a realised it was probably a load of twaddle. Then I checked it out. It was a very well crafted piece of hard sell, complete with testimonies urging you to give it a go. All very tempting.

I can't believe that there's enough room left in my consciousness to contemplate this sort of thing when we are apparently flushing ourselves down the deepest financial hole ever, Africa is imploding from massacres and starvation, the environment is on the blink, and welcoming sunny Thailand is on the brink of a military coup! And Christmas is in 29 days.

Time for some comic relief. Of sorts. (Open season on Americans ends Jan 3rd...) The BBC showed some footage from Bangkok airport, quite tellingly interviewing stranded passengers but apparently not the protesters. One of the men being filmed was a middle aged American tourist who was harranging a rather dismayed Thai Airways representative. The following words actually came out of his mouth: "Tomorrow is a big holiday in the US [Note: The holiday in question is Thanksgiving. Europeans don't celebrates it because we don't celebrate ethnic cleansing.] and now loads of people are going to miss it because of your cockaminey little protest over here." Yes, he actually called the public disorder that could lead to the overthrowing of the current Thai governent "cockaminey". Puts the invasion of Iraq in perspective. Thank goodness for Obama.

Have a nice day!


The double diet was Acai Berries and a brand of Green Tea promoted on the Oprah Winfrey show. Now you know.