When we were kids, the golden phrase we frequently used would most probably be “My mommy told me not to talk to strangers”. As we got older and saner (not saner because we got older, I don't believe in those), we were told that being unknown was not always such a sinister thing. In school, you were taught to make friends with the other children. Sometimes, strange people whom you thought didn’t exist, help you in ways that would amaze you. When I was in class eleven, I broke my wrist when my cycle hit an auto-rickshaw (I was riding the cycle as fast as I could, and didn’t see the vehicle stationed ahead of me. There, it was my fault). There was this old lady who stood by me, holding my wrist, while I shivered and shook, blood oozing from somewhere above my eye, right into it, blurring my vision and completely petrifying me. She took me back home, from where my parents threw me into a car and took me to the nearest doctor. I never saw the old lady again, I never ceased wondering who she was or why she had to spend an hour trying to pacify me and pack me back home.

 I received royal chiding later on, after which I didn’t use the cycle for another 7 years. I now have one, which looks like this –

 But I digress. The point of this post is not about my bicycling skills (or the lack thereof). Strangers are not people whom ‘you were not supposed to talk to’. On the contrary, you’ll be surprised at the number of these strangers, who are now your close friends. With social networking websites like Orkut, Friendster, MySpace and their likes (all the few thousands of them), it becomes so easy to find a person who is just as funny or moody or plain weird as you (trust me, there are a lot of weird people out there). Of course, you also get your fair share of annoyances and amusements (which deserves an exclusive blog post).

 And then there are friends of your friends, whom you would have met at this concert, this technical symposium, at this boring talk, during this weekend trip or in a movie-theatre and you seem to get along instantly (‘She has the same camera as mine! How cool is that!”). Oh well, I digress again.

 Today, I met one such friend. From Orkut (I can see alarm bells going off “You met someone you’ve never known? From Orkut? How could you?”). It was different to see a different perspective. It was crazy. It was a lot of fun.

 In other news, I met up with a lot of familar faces the last 3 weeks or so. I went shoe-shopping with my school friend and her friend (who happens to know my friend at work - after this, it gets a little complicated). That was fun, except that we never bought any shoes. And then, I met my classmates from college for lunch at Eat Street. We had a good time there, poking fun at each other and wasting food. I so love the Chola Batura there, reminds me of the street-side shops at New Delhi.

I still have to write about my trip to Chennai, the Microsoft annual party and my new collection of beach artifacts. More on that later! Oops, not later..very soon!

I call this picture, "The Flower Painting"

These flowers are real. In fact, a friend of mine went over and checked :)

And And finally, another pink flower..