Figuring out FOAF

When I chose not to join AME, I decided not to join any other formal job. If it is not this, nothing else kind of attitude. I took the risk of remaining a housewife but was planning to do something. I tried a few things I liked - greeting cards, handmade paper, city farming and even voice over, but didn't venture actually.

It was time to settle somewhere and I could convince my husband to buy a flat in an area close to the Agricultural University and other related institutes. Although distant, ICRISAT is also quite accessible from that area. My idea was to stay close to those institutes so that I remain in touch with my friends and profession.

I was rather an early bird to that place. There were already a couple of senior scientists in our apartment complex, but I could only elicit sympathy for having left a decent Government job. There was no professional knowledge sharing.

I joined the other women in the flat and we did many wonderful things, if not in the magnitude but in the spirit! More about it in another post..

I continued attending meetings and conferences and was getting some assignment or the other, because I was visible. Slowly my classmates and friends started flocking in the same locality. Friends of friends, relatives of friends, neighbors of friends - got to know more and more about people, projects and events. I could attend the alumni meeting...so thrilling it was! And more recently the `Say NO to BT brinjal' campaign.

It is exciting to know something different, yet relevant every now and then. Not that every idea or thought takes a concrete shape immediately ...

It took me seven years to discover the artists in the neighborhood. I could guess in the very beginning, when we joined our flat that some artists live in the next street, as I could see a different kind of clay, broken pieces of castings etc. on the road. I was asking several people about it but in vain. Years later, I stumbled upon them when my daughter joined clay modeling classes in summer with my new FOAF connections.

FOAF connections, as the FOAF Project puts it, "FOAF lets you share and inter-connect information from diverse sources, move it around, and use it in unexpected new ways."

So I am trying to figure out how this works to help me expand my network without actually taking much of each other's time. But I don't know how `on-line ready' my friends are!