Work it out

Rachel - I know I know!! He's a... he's a... transponster!
Monica - THAT'S NOT EVEN A WORD!!!!!!

Fellow fans of the TV series F.R.I.E.N.D.S will know what I am talking about. This is one of my favourite scenes from the series, not just because of the way Chandler reacts to none of his close friends knowing his occupation, but because of how true this phenomenon is.

For years I have faced questions like:

"So Sayesha, how's the newspaper going?" (What newspaper??)

"I heard you're like a journalist and stuff?" (Where did you hear that?)

"So do they send you to places with natural disasters for news reporting?" (Huh??)

"Is your job dangerous?" (Yeah, very. Editors of kids' books and magazines are shot on the streets of Singapore.)

"Man, I heard you're the Chief Editor of the largest newspaper in Singapore! That's cool yaar!" (I wish! Actually I don't. Newspapers? Bleah.)

"So MBA over?" (MBA? Who's doing an MBA? If you mean Masters in Mass Communication, yeah, that's over.)

And that's when it struck me - instead of being glad that most of them at least know vaguely that I have abandoned engineering for good and plunged into publishing, I go "What buggers! They're supposed to be my close friends and they don't even know what I do!" without wondering for a moment if I know for sure what the hell they do.

I mean face it, your friends, your cousins... do you really know what they do? I for one, don't. I mean I know some are in IT, some are in banks, some are doing their MBA degrees, some are doing random things, but if you ask me exactly what they do, which company they are in, what their designation is, what they are studying, I have no clue most of the time!

Take for example this cousin of mine. Every time I speak to him, I ask him the same question. In fact, I've been asking the same question for years now, "So have you graduated from university? Got your IT degree?" And he keeps saying he hasn't. So either he's flunking every year, or I have been asking him the question since he was in primary school.

When you become friends with someone, the first thing you find out is what they do. But the closer you get, the less it matters what they do, and after a while, it stops mattering. And by then, not only have you forgotten what they do, but you're such close friends that you have missed the window period of friendship when you can actually ask them, "So what exactly do you do?" Even trying to be smart and asking them, "So what's up, man? What have you been upto?" will get you answers like "Same old yaar..." or "Still working in the same place..." while on the inside you're dying to ask, "And what exactly was the same old?" or "What is that place again?"

And that's when I discovered this wonderful solution called Orkut. We may curse it for all the random "frand shib requests" and "Nice profile. I want to friend you. You want to friend me?" messages, but the truth is - it can help you in a way no one can.

Every moment of every day, long-lost friends are getting in touch through Orkut. Visit the profile of any of your friends and you will see messages like "Hi Bhaiya, remember me? I was your junior in school, you used to snatch my tiffin box!" or "Man, you look so different from school days!" or "Hey, remember me? We were in the same IIT coaching class!" or "I can't believe I found you after so many years! How are Uncle and Aunty and Didi?" Now the trick is to follow the trail of these long lost friends of your friends, for they are bound to ask your friend at one point or the other, "So what do you do?" And when you see that, bingo! You go to that person's scrapbook, read your friend's reply, and lo and behold, you know exactly what your friend does for a living!

Of course, do remember to disable 'profile visit views' before you go on your spying spree or you may just end up with a message like "Why you visited my profile? Now I want to friend you."