in the moment

While attempting to clear random rubbish out of my external hard drive (20 pictures of the same pose, movies that I never bothered to watch again, and lots of junk from uni work), I came across album after album of pictures from 2004 to present.

I started clicking through these forgotten pictures, reminiscing, laughing...at the stupid haircuts, clothes, and poses. My God, how times have changed. 

Then I realised how sad it is that I'm storing these precious memories in a piece of equipment that will one day meet its death due to overloading. When was the last time I kept a physical photo album-- those plastic ones that make sticky velcro-like noises when someone flipped through them?

 Nearly 10 years ago. 

My collection of photo albums died at the birth of digital cameras. 

My mother used to nag at us for taking pictures out of the photo albums, and for not storing developed ones properly.  She says that if we don't look after them, in 30 years to come we will have no physical memory of our past. I guess she speaks from experience: in her younger days cameras were a luxury to keep. Unlike my niece whom we can take 100 pictures of anytime we want, my mother and her siblings had very few photographs of themselves during their childhood. They have a treasure of inspiring stories to tell from their youth, but these are only stored in memory. I remember being told how one one of my uncles was born during the Japanese Occupation, and had to be hidden by my grandmother in a huge drainpipe to avoid being killed by the Japanese. Till today I think about how strong the older generation are in comparison to us! 

We were lucky enough to recover an old black and white album from my grandparents' house. The cover is falling apart but the few precious photographs, though yellowed with age, is still there for many generations to cherish. 

What will we, people of the 21st century, be passing to our great-grand children in the future?

Hard drives that will probably be as outdated and as useless as the Floppy Disk.

Perhaps by then laptops with USB slots won't even be feasible for use, like how those elephant-like processors operating on DOS are to us today. 

I may have one of my nostalgic days where I want to sit in front of the cabinet and pore through the photo albums, but then being in the more advanced stage of the 21st century I might plug in my dusty hard drive only to realise that the fall that it took two days ago completely killed it, along with all my photographs. Technology, though ingenious, can be the bane of our existence sometimes. 

And sadly, I still deny this even after numerous incidents where I've lost my entire work.

So make an effort, dig through your files, and send them off to be printed. 

Give your children, grand children and great-grand children a chance to get to know you through your precious stills when your memory loses its battle to age. After all, a photograph tells a thousand words.

Plus it will provide them with much entertainment to laugh at your so called fashion sense.