C'est La Vie;That's life

We all have given, received and returned or exchanged gifts throughout our lives. It's one of those inevitable, endless, at times dull social etiquettes that has been going on for many centuries, right? In an idealistic Utopian world, gifts should be given without any 'quid pro quo' or any expectations in return, but in this real, greedy world......who are we kidding? Yeah, yeah, we've all heard the worn-out and cliched, "its the thought that matters" kind of saintly statements, but you better have high monetary standards for your thoughts, folks. Else, be ready to incur the wrath of some very hostile hosts for the rest of your social life. Also, i've a honest confession to make. The people who have mastered this gifting technique have my full-blown, unabashed greenest envy. The way they enter a party or a house with a neatly, glossy-wrapped, present that looks like it's taken them years of thoughtful planning, makes me feel like a Neathandral woma...

In a recent newspaper article, a British anthropologist Robin Dunbar has proposed that there is a theoretical cognitive limit imposed by our brain's neocortex, to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. This is called 'Dunbar number' and approximated closely to 150. Interestingly, the number also includes past colleagues such as high school friends with whom a person would want to reacquaint themselves if they met again. This theory is now being extensively used for research into Internet social networking sites. Makes sense, right? We might be tempted to greedily keep adding those "friend requests" on our social networking sites to long-lost people whom we haven't heard in zillion years and even to passers-by on the road, but please hold back those instincts, curb your enthusiuasm, or put a damp sock in it - at least if the list is getting out of hand. It's time to take a closer look at who's truly a friend or a...