Day 1: On blogs and old friends

I once again have decided to start a blog. The last one lasted for exactly one post. Then I forgot the address! So the damn thing is lost in cyberspace somewhere.

Why a blog?

Well, I have spent the last week meeting three of my old school friends on the internet. Checked out my old school (DTEA RK Puram) on google search, discovered an alumni page, found some phone numbers and email IDs and voila! I am in touch with one classmate right here in Delhi (whose address and phone numbers I had lost long ago), one in Hongkong and the third in Bangalore.

I then exchanged details separately with the three of them. So much easier if I had a blog, to let my friends know what is happening in my life right now. Thats what I felt, when I visited the blog of my niece, who is from a different generation and much more net savvy than I could ever be.

And yet, it is frightening just how much I can find out about just anybody by spending half an hour on the internet. In fact, I was actually googling for a person's name, another old school mate, for whom I had used "DTEA" to refine the search, that I happened upon the alumni site. Then I googled my own name and was amazed. Of course, my medical publications came up, but so did my contact addresses and many other details - if anybody wanted to find out all about me, it would be so easy.

And here I am, putting more fingerprints on the internet. I guess I decided information overload would ensure that the details would actually become more difficult to fish out. Believe me, I have actually experienced this while doing a medical literature search - relevant information has a tendency to be hidden beneath such a lot of irrelevance that it is like finding a needle in a haystack.

The real reason is of course plain boredom, not having anything to do (more precisely, not having the inclination to do any of the things I am supposed to be doing right now!) - so let me start a blog.

And maybe, just maybe, I would actually start having thoughts which are worth writing down, rather than the random and mostly unnecessary ruminations which occupy my mind all the while.