Six Degrees of Separation

On Blogging
I discovered blogging less than three weeks ago. For those of you who have been at it for a few months/years now go on and say it a la Dr Cox, I am a "newbie". I discovered a couple of blogs, I liked the articles and thought to put up some random observations of my own. My parents are Nigerians who choose to settle in the UK in the seventies and have since reared myself and my siblings in London. I have had the fortune to also spend about 8 years in Nigeria and thus identify myself primarily as a Nigerian. Eva Hoffman once said "Every immigrant becomes a kind of amateur anthropologist" and it is with this dual viewpoint I observe the world around me.

One of the things that has intrigued me in the last few weeks is how similar my views are to some of the bloggers I have chosen to repeatedly visit their sites (I'm not stalking you guys, I promise). In the main the articles have been very well written by amateurs to this trade (apart from a couple of notable exemptions) and I am impressed at how articulate, humourous and intellectual my fellow Nigerians are. So far I have limited myself to blogs from people of the Nigerian Community, but I must admit that in the next few weeks I'm looking forward to exploring other options with blogs around my interests as opposed to just my background (any ideas for how to seek these blogs are welcome guys).

Degrees of Separation
I'm sure most of us have heard of the theory of Six degrees of Separation where everyone on the planet can be connected to another random person through six social acquantances. Its also called the small world phenomenon and there is a hollywood game named after this where you have to go from Denzel Washington to say Tom Cruise in the least amount of steps (Denzel acted in 'Philadelphia' with Tom Hanks who acted in 'The Terminal' with Chi Mcbride who once acted in 'The Practice' with Steve Harris who acted in 'Minority Report' with Tom Cruise - anyone got a shorter connection?).

I would argue that with the Nigerian community the number of steps required to jump from one Nigerian to another halves the number to about three despite the fact that there are over 150million of us. One of the things I've found interesting is how on visiting these blogs I've seen people who will know people I know (in 3 cases I've found my girlfriend or I know actually know the blogger, you might chose to ostensibly remain anonymous but its interesting how much you can reveal the more you say). We all go to the same schools (Buckingham, South Bank Uni etc) we go to the same parties/clubs and visit the same restaurants. Hell one of you guys reading this might have even been at the barbeque I was at in North London yesterday!

My Dilemma
I have spent nine years of my life in Universities in both the UK and in Nigeria. If I am going to include other Higher education such as A levels, Short courses etc I dread to think how high that number could go to. Its interesting that my current job doesn't necessarily require a University degree more my years of experience in the field, but thats another story. The reason I bring up University is that during my first degree, I met one of my closest friends lets call her 'Bola' (who ever said that men and women can't be friends lied). I've known her for over ten years and our 'relationship' has become a bit of a support system. Sometimes we don't see each other for months, other times she's in my place every other day and I'm in hers.

A couple of years ago Bola started dating 'David'. It so happens I knew David tangetially from my masters but wasn't involved in them getting together. Unfortunately Bola and David broke up a few months later and I heard all sorts of awful things about David from Bola that I never previously knew about. I bumped into David at the Bar-b-que yesterday and he practically blanked me. Chei? Wetin concern me inside? I asked one of my homeboys about it later and he reckons David holds me responsible for their break-up. How far? So right about now I'm in a bit of a dillema as whether to pick up the phone and call David (I'm sure I could get his number somewhere) or just leave it all alone. Man life hard O!