Nowadays, our mobile phone holds so much information about ourselves. Just checking the photo albums - they will speak thousands words about who we are and what we do. There are some rather private photos that would even provide too much information. Apart from that glancing through the search history provides clues of our personal interests. I can still be a tad more careful about these sort of information on my phone but sometimes it is a bother trying to cover all the traces. However, the thought of confidential stuff slipping through scares me. That is why I take precautions when passing my iPhone to anyone whether sharing a photo of food I devoured or a photo of a hot guy cuddling a kitten in bed though I am generally less concerned with my friends who know that I'm gay.
In Asia, talking about sex is a taboo so let alone talking to sexuality and being gay. Fortunately, it is becoming a lot more accepting in Thailand (after all, Thailand is considered a paradise for gay). People can be quite oblivious about this too so they never notice anything and my mum snuggles this group. The concepts of family structure between Western and Eastern cultures differ in a interesting way. Asians tend to be very family oriented and usually include extended family members as our family too i.e. aunt, uncle, cousin etc. Recently I had just a little family lunch out - there were my mum, little cousin, uncle A (my mum's brother), uncle's friend P and me. A few pieces of fact about my uncle A and P - A has known P for more than 20 years and they met while working in a bank. So P is pretty much seen as part of the family and everyone in my family adores him.
I hate stereotypes but they exist to categorise people and they work well at times. It is bad to generalise based on stereotypes but I often use them as a frame work of mind to build more information upon. I can say that A and P fit too many gay stereotypes. A and P have shared many important moments of life and spend a lot of time together. They bought an apartment next to each other and bought a house together. They are still single. Their sense of fashion, design, sensibility, manner, attitude towards life, open mindedness, wealth and love to travel surpass that of the straights.
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| What do the searches say about me? |
I had always suspected A and P for ages but never really have a proof to confirm. Until on our way back to Bangkok after a delightful lunch, I was trying to search
a famous kitchen showroom but I don't have internet on my phone. P was driving and told me that I could use his phone. However, I noticed a brief moment of hesitation before he passed his phone to me. It was that moment I realise there must be something private in his phone that he didn't want me to see. I was determined not to peek into his privacy so I just tapped into Safari and started keying on the search engine. Then the search history fanned out and there was a search phrase that caught my eyes "japan gay porn". That phrase only raises a lot of probabilities and questions. Now it is time to ponder - what is the chance of someone else using P's phone? It is extremely unlikely since P rarely lets anyone use his phone. Who else know the password to access P's phone? My uncle A and he often plays games on P's phone! What can I conclude? The person who typed the search phrase is probably either A or P. Even though what I found is not a concrete piece of evidence, it is the missing piece of jigsaw and everything makes sense.
Now should I tell them about my sexuality? Not yet, there is a few things I need to do before that but I talk to them before telling my mum. Another heart warming piece of fact is that my mum is quite close to my uncle A and is very fond of P.
