I’m twenty – bloody – five years old. And it shows in my lifestyle. Somewhere along the years, I’ve slowly but surely shed my student persona and become a fully grown adult. While some habits and attitudes I’ve developed are about growing older, some are plainly about being old fashioned. Here are some clear signs of both:

• The first and clearest warning is my complete aversion to SMS lingo. I simply cannot stand it. Even when I am texting, I painstakingly type out most words in full, with capitals and punctuations in place (which explains why I am not into texting at all). I’m trying to break out of this habit, and I’ve learnt to accept the ‘i tol d bss im sik bt m actlly wtchng d mtch bt dnt tll nebdy tht n gt ppcrn n ppsi n cum ovr aftr wrk’ as my lot in life. But when I get emails and chat messages from people in this new language, I have to force myself to take deep breaths, count to 10,000 and then prepare to read the mail/ message.
• My reluctance to embrace social networking the way most of my friends do is the clearest indicator that I’m old fashioned. Sure, I’m on Orkut and Facebook. But I visit them about once in 2 weeks. I usually look upon these visits as a boring chore, where I try and respond to the messages in my inbox/scrapbook/ wall, return ‘visits’ from friends, leave the occasional comment on photos and status updates and get the hell outta there. As for twitter, I signed up a long time ago and have mercifully forgotten all about it. Yeah, I’m going to be one of those old fogeys who doesn’t tweet. Seriously, I’m amazed at how people find the time!
• This new found desire to spend my Sundays doing absolutely nothing but roll about in bed with a book all day, watch endless reruns of friends, sleep like a bear in hibernation, and get my lazy ass off the bed only in the evening for a shower, and an hour or so at the Barista/CCD on MG Road before I head home to hit the sack – this is an alarmingly clearly sign of my growing old. Sure, Saturdays are hectic – I reserve my Saturdays for shopping, watching plays, catching up on friends and partying – but earlier, Sundays were an extension of my Saturdays – now they are my day of rest and recuperation.
• I talk about working out and ‘being fit’. Now don’t be silly, I don’t actually work out. But I do talk about joining aerobics class and working out. Everyday I walk into office with my gym outfit and trainers and cool sippy-type sports water bottle, all determined to join the aerobics class thisveryday, but inevitably find urgent high-priority work to finish at 6pm, sadly forcing me to miss the class. My student persona never even talked about working out, leave alone carrying out this whole farce for delusional self-gratification.
• My adult persona has a hidden cleanliness freak inside! Who would’ve though? She is not, let us be clear on this, any where close to Monica like behaviour. We are talking about cleanliness freak by my standards – its all relative! So now I actually keep the clothes in my cupboard neatly pressed and folded (instead of a haphazard mess from which I pick u whatever fall out first to wear as the outfit of the day), I mostly put things back in their place, and my living room and bedroom are largely neat and tidy on any given day!
  Now that I have proved I am grown up, have exposed myself for being quaintly old fashioned, I feel the urge to stand up for my student persona, to claim that she hasn’t completely given up one me either. But then, that’s another post for another day!