If you are bored, then Bangalore has no dearth of interesting and downright quirky groups that you can think of joining. Here is a look at some...

Often we get bored with the regular entertainment circuit of mall, movies, pub and some good food. We end up whiling away time in the house, unable for the life of us, to find something interesting to do. But then perhaps we just don’t look hard enough into the social landscape of this very dynamic city – there are a lot of little groups that could make your days a whole lot more interesting if you share a passion or a hobby with them.

Bringing blogging back into fashion - The Marathon Bloggers

“I felt that my blog was dying and I wanted to revive it with a one-month long daily marathon.” says blogger and founder, Sin-A-Mon (a baking and food consulting company). “I could see blogs giving way slowly to Twitter and Facebook updates and frankly both of them don't have a long term value. I posted on my page that I want to do a one month long spree of blogging and there were many who wanted to join. The Marathon Bloggers Group was thus born, with a complete online presence in December 2012. Today, it is a very active group of 108 people.”

After the December marathon, we began Project 52 - a post a week for the entire year. Theme based blogging also happens every couple of months. An interesting one we had was on one word prompts and it was fun to see how bloggers from different domains interpreted it.

The best thing to come out of the group is the team work and the friendships formed and the fact that the group is actually run by all. Our meets are regular, sometimes theme-based like celebrating a member's book launch, an Antakshari meet, etc. We also plan to hold a live blogging event (a member idea) where we are thinking of giving a theme on the spot and have members blog immediately.

Connecting over Art – The Pencil Jammers

Roshan makes his living from comics and illustrations and is the co-founder of Liberartisti. He happened to come across the Facebook page of the Pencil Jammers one day and loved the idea of a group sketching outside the four walls of their office and decided to join them. The group has around 15,000 members across various cities, though not all of them very active.

Pencil Jams happens on Sundays. Members are intimated about time, venue and a location map is place on the group’s website, community, or Facebook page a couple of days earlier.  The session starts early morning and there are no rules. People can drop in at anytime, use any medium they like to do their art in and leave at anytime. Jam sessions are usually followed by sharing of sketchbooks and finished with sharing some tea/coffee/smokes whatever helps you put a full stop.

Roshan says, “For me, work,hobby, everything is related to art. And it used to happen inside the house, on a computer. Being a member of Pencil Jam helped me go out and connect with the things I normally draw from imagination or Google search for references.” Meeting other artists, understanding different mediums and spending a weekend with your passion can be just what you need.

For Batter or for Worse! - Love Sex and Dosa

Three friends George Seemon, Mario Jerome and Pavandeep Singh headed out for breakfast one day. They stepped out discussing the meal and realized after a while that all their analysis was centered on the dosa they had just had – right from the crispness to the filling, to the accompaniments, they talked about it all. On the spur of the moment they felt that it would be a great idea to experiment with dosa eating across the city and find the elusive “best dosa in Bangalore”. This mission found itself having its own Facebook page, which snowballed into scores of dosa fans joining in to follow the mission. The name Love Sex and Dosa was from the mind of Pavandeep Singh, “who had at least 30 names at the end of day, once we had decided to actually set up the page,” says Mario. Whenever the trio plan a dosa-eating session out, an event is placed on the Facebook page, and anyone is free to come join in the fun. The group began in July of 2012 and today has around 1300 followers. “We always ask members for suggestions on where to go and people tell us about dosas that they have had in all sorts of places. The good part about it all is that there will never be a shortage of places to have a dosa in Bangalore.” – And so the quest continues.

The Chef at Large (CaL) Bloggers Table

Chef at Large is a food blog that began a while ago with an online presence and today has grown to close to 7500 members all sharing their thoughts on food. The Blogger’s Table is an offshoot of this group. “Food blogging was a relatively new concept a few years ago and the bloggers in this niche were scattered over various platforms,” Natasha Ali, Associate Editor and Table Coordinator for the group in Bangalore.  “We wanted to increase the reach and quality of the existing food blogging scene, and connect with like-minded bloggers, as well as bridge the gap with industry. We have restaurant meet-ups, a mix of paid (where each member pays for their meal) events and those on invite from the industry. We have made a lot of new friends at these events, and now getting together over good food is all the more pleasurable.”

CaL Blogger's Table began in Delhi in 2011, and the Bangalore chapter took off towards the end of 2012. The group has a clearly written charter, and CaL team members who coordinate in the different cities work hard to ensure the Table's ideals and values are upheld. Tables are present in Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata besides Bangalore. The City’s chapter had their first meeting in January this year, and has had several since then.

There are several more groups in the City based on travel, technology, food, fashion, sports and even philosophy. So the next time you feel you have nothing to do, it just means you have not looked hard enough.