{"id":88,"date":"2010-05-06T14:22:07","date_gmt":"2010-05-06T18:22:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tobeycat.com\/ub\/?p=88"},"modified":"2010-05-18T14:07:43","modified_gmt":"2010-05-18T18:07:43","slug":"where-a-bond-forms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wancatcat.com\/ub\/?p=88","title":{"rendered":"Where a Bond Forms"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Carmen Wong Ka I<\/strong><\/p>\n

Christine, a very shy girl, was brave enough to attend a dinner gathering party with more than 50 strangers organized through an Internet community.<\/p>\n

On the night of February 25, a group of Macao youth born in the 1980s met with their Facebook friends they made through their Facebook group called \u201cMacao Youth 80s\u201d. They organized their first annual dinner and had hosted a party with their \u201cvirtual friends\u201d; Christine was one of them.<\/p>\n

With the growing popularity of Facebook, the \u201cMacao Youth 80s\u201d group, which is one of the popular post-80s Internet groups in Macao, uses Facebook as a tool to form their own community. The group was set up on Facebook in May 2009, attracting over 5000 post-80s members till now.<\/p>\n

The main goal of the group is to enrich the social circle of the post-80s youth. They organize a wide variety of offline activities ranging from a monthly birthday gathering, badminton games, barbecue parties to photo-taking workshops and blood donations. Sometimes, job recruitments and interest courses will be posted by members for notice.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am a newbie, but it\u2019s nice to get to know so many new friends of my own age; it\u2019s like going back to school,\u201d Christine, a 21-year-old administrative clerk, shared her feeling towards this meeting. She became a member of the group a few days before the annual dinner. Christine admitted that she was shy but she would like to make more friends of her age. \u201cI do not have much to talk about with my colleagues at work who are at least 10 years older than me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Keon Chan, the creator of the group, expressed that the sole purpose for the majority of the members to join the group is to make friends. He said that many members of the 1980s just started working these few years, and they have less contact with their friends when they work. According to Chan, organizing this group can give them a way to make friends with people of the same age and, most importantly, to build self confidence and cultivate a sense of belonging with their peers.<\/p>\n

However, Chan wants more from the post-80s. \u201cWith the tight bond among the post-80s youth, I wish that one day the post-80s can form a strong force to express themselves in society.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chan indicated that the strong force comes from the diversity of talents found in the group. According to him, there are around 100 active members in the group. They represent various fields, ranging from education, IT, tourism, catering, to insurance, banking, and real estate industries. They have different talents and skills in their own profession which can become a bonding element to help each other. It has a potential to play a more active role in society as the future rests upon this generation.<\/p>\n

Harry Tong, a Year 4 student, said that he has been a member of the Facebook group for half a year but never attended any meeting. He said that although these activities are very interesting, he does not care to join. However, he admitted that it is a good idea to gather a group of people who share a common identity and memory of their age.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Carmen Wong Ka I Christine, a very shy girl, was brave enough to attend a dinner gathering party with more than 50 strangers organized through an Internet community. On the night of February 25, a group of Macao youth born in the 1980s met with their Facebook friends they made through their Facebook group […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":89,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-88","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-communication-style"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wancatcat.com\/ub\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wancatcat.com\/ub\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wancatcat.com\/ub\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wancatcat.com\/ub\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wancatcat.com\/ub\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=88"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.wancatcat.com\/ub\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":329,"href":"https:\/\/www.wancatcat.com\/ub\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88\/revisions\/329"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wancatcat.com\/ub\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/89"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wancatcat.com\/ub\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=88"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wancatcat.com\/ub\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=88"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wancatcat.com\/ub\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=88"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}