I remember driving home in 1989 and thinking I had a flat tire because the car went all wobbly. I pulled over and discovered that my tires were fine; the earth was moving. It was the Loma Prieta Earthquake, and I soon discovered my apartment in shambles. But a funny thing happened.

All of my neighbors were outside, stunned. We talked. We shared stories. We bonded. It was a strangely good time. And I felt connected to people at a deeper level than ever before. Shared disaster does that.

A shared disaster brings people out in the open, out of their comfort zones, gets them talking, and makes them know a bit more about each other that they did not discover before.

Happened with us on campus too. Mashed by force and by situation, we were business school students who had lots of time with each other; but still most of us were huddled in our own rooms with Gtalk / MSN / Yahoo / whatever chat program we used and we continued to hang on to whatever few friends we had for dear life.

It took the ‘Russian salad’ incident (food poisoning), the summer placements and INDEX preparations to get us out in the open, and these shared experiences are some of the best memories of L that I carry. br /br /Also one of the reasons why I love the selling line of Smirnoff: “Life is calling, where are you?”. Our generations needs some more face to face interaction. We sometimes forget how much fun that can be.