A good friend effortlessly makes the day seem sunny. Even when it's not.

Probably one of the sweetest things a friend can say is:  “I’ve got your back.”

It makes a huge difference when knowing that you are not alone.  That someone cares.  And so very gamed to be your cheerleader and avid supporter.

With friends like these, one can weather the toughest storms in life.

And the best thing is, you never know when you’ll encounter such precious lifelong friends.  They can appear at any point of your life.  They don’t necessarily have to be chums from schooldays who have seen you before your pre-braces days.  They don’t have to be church, college mates or colleagues from work.

Some of my closest buddies come from a book club.  In a way, it makes sense.  We have something in common – a shared passion.  Even though our tastes in reading materials differ greatly, we met at a time when we were ready to welcome a kindred spirit into our full lives.  It has been nearly six years since we first met.  That is longer than most romantic relationships we’ve ever had, heh.

There were times when we did not manage to catch up with each other (sometimes for months or years on end).  But whenever we do get to meet, the bond is still there and the friendship ready to be taken up where it was left off.  We are not perfect but we try our best to celebrate and appreciate our differences.  And we wouldn’t have it any other way.

Come hell or highwater, I know my sistahs have my back.  Just as I have theirs.  And that is that bright patch of sunlight in the gloomy world that we live in now.

Photo credits

Twinnie once blogged this:

And to quote the character Jesse in one of my favourite movies Before Sunset, “I guess when you’re young, you just believe there’ll be many people with whom you’ll connect with. Later in life, you realize it only happens a few times.”

And when you do connect, you grab it – be it in friendship or in love. It doesn’t happen as often as we think.

She’s right.

I’ve been silent for a while here.   It just means that I’ve been busy with preparations before I travel and catching up with work when I returned from travel.

Where did I go?  Not far – PD (with friends, two weekends ago) and Cameron Highlands (for work, early this week).   In the PD trip, it was a great time reconnecting with my old school chums.  In the Camerons one, I made a number of nice media friends.   And in between travels, I’ve been meeting up with my sistahs and close chums a lot.

It has been the trend this year – appreciating friends.  To not be so consumed with work and personal goals at the expense of building stronger friendships.  I’m glad that my friends are making the effort to meet up and reconnect with each other as well.  It takes two to make a friendship work.

And I’ve discovered that there’s always room for more friends.  See, we can’t always be with our closest chums all the time.  Circumstances will fling each one of us far and wide – sometimes to lands unknown.  Of course it’s hard to develop the same sense of closeness with a newly made friend as opposed to a proven ‘oldie’.  But there’s the joy of getting to know someone new, discovering new things about each other and later on, falling into a comfortable pattern with that person.

Life is indeed better with friends.  And yes, silence is not so golden.  So, keep in touch with your friends whenever you can!

So there we were at our favourite Indian restaurant Gem last Friday, when a waiter approached our table.  Well, made a beeline for Twinnie, more accurately.

"Excuse me, Ms. Taty.  There is a phone call for you from Annie," he said.

The four of us at the table were gobsmacked.  Twinnie blinked in disbelief before following the waiter to the phone.

"Now, isn’t that strange?" the rest of us marvelled.  Why would Annie call the restaurant instead of calling Twinnie directly on the phone?

"If Twinnie couldn’t hear her phone ringing, Annie could have at least called one of us," I said.

"Yeah, there is no need for her to call the restaurant number," Hath agreed.

Soon Twinnie returned from her surprise phone call and said, "Good news, Annie’s able to join us for dinner after all!"

Ecstatic as we were, we still had to satisfy our curiosity, "But why did Annie call the restaurant to get to you???"

"She did try to call me and you girls!" Twinnie replied.

Gobsmacked for the second time, Hath and I hurriedly checked our phones.  True enough, there was not one but two missed calls from poor Annie.

We sent a silent apology to what must have been a frustrated Annie.  Gosh, we really must change our ringtones to something more blaring to avoid such incidences in future.  Sorry, Annie!

Some of you readers may also be wondering – in the sea of people dining at the restaurant, how did the waiter know just who Ms. Taty is?  Mind you, there were 40 tourists from India dining at the same time with us as well as other patrons.  Long story short, Twinnie has visited Gems so often that she’s practically a main fixture there already.  Plus, she makes it a point to chat with the waiters – unlike reserved me.  Which may explain why the waiters don’t ever remember me.  Even on what must have been my hundredth visit.

No matter.  The food’s good.  The company’s even better and like it or not, we sistahs have carved a history for ourselves at Gem’s.  We ain’t going anywhere.

While my friends were chewing food during dinner recently, I decided to check on my Facebook updates on friends.  Lo and behold I saw a mushy update from a friend.  She declared her love and devotion to her beloved for all to see on his wall. 

To romantics who are sold into public expressions of love and affection, this is a grand and touching gesture indeed.

But to the rest of us (like my friends and I), it was errr… way too mushy for our tastes lar.  I couldn’t resist showing the update to Twinnie who was savouring her grilled fish with relish.

"What the heck??!" she swallowed her fish in a tizzy and scrunched her face in mock agony.  "I just lost my appetite!"

Then I showed FT who went, "Oh man.  Why would people do that??!"

Exactly.

Why would anyone want to subject hundreds upon hundreds of their friends with syrupy sickening sweet messages like these?

We are not alone.

A few weeks ago, Mix FM’s breakfast show had a segment on Facebook status and wall posts that people deem to be inappropriate.  One lady caller said that she nearly threw up when she read a guy friend posting this about his wife:

"I’m all alone on my bed missing my Queen."

Ewwwww…. right?  It’s definitely not something you want to read first thing in the morning while enjoying your cup of coffee.

These messages are private and in my opinion, should be treated as such.  No one (saved for your beloved) is interested to know about the minute romantic details of your life.  So, might as well keep it between just the two of you.

So get a private space or privatise your messages where no prying or disinterested parties can see. That way, both you and your sweetheart get to indulge in all the displays of lurve and affection you want without causing nausea to friends and foes alike.

This is a public service message by Coolcat and gang.

Made a new friend yesterday during McUser’s karaoke birthday outing.  This new friend, whom I shall call F, hails from the USA, looks like Salman Khan, is a kiasu Chinese at heart, and drinks like a German.  The man’s a walking poster child for multi-cultural diversity.

Why the kiasu bit?  Well, we arrived at Red Box few minutes after 9pm.  And the buffet table closes at 10pm.  That gave us less than an hour to heap our plates with the goodies.  After being directed to our karaoke cubicle, F and I rushed to the buffet tables to gather food like there’s no tomorrow.

“You Want Soup?”

For all his multi-cultural diversity, to F, one Chinese girl looks about the same as another.  As he was ladling soup into bowls on his tray, he asked the Chinese girl next to him, “You want soup?” He thought the girl was me.

The girl just froze, gave him a hard stare and walked away.

F was taken aback for a while and then chuckled good-naturedly.

Moral of the story:

1. Verify the identity of the person you are speaking to before opening your mouth.
2. Don’t ever say, “You want soup?” to strange women. They may think it’s the lousiest pick-up line ever.

I’m sure you’ve met people who are nice, friendly, as interested to get to know about you as you are about them.  They have many friends and seem to know everyone who’s anyone from different industries, age, sexuality, creed and background.  They are unassuming and make great conversationalists who can talk about any topic under the sun.  They are not judgmental and no one is too good or too bad to be their friend.  And most importantly, they do not make friends to further their cause or business.  They just like people without any ulterior motives or agenda.

Sounds like the ultimate perfect friendster, eh?

Until you realize that such friends come with certain limitations.  They forget what you have told them and what they have told you.  They still remember important stuff, of course.  What you do, your phone number, important dates, your close friends, your hobbies.  It’s probably safely contained in their rolodex – how else can they keep track of so many friends?  But for the life of them, they can’t recall that the trivial news that they have shared to you and may share that bit to you over and over again.

Secondly, you can’t get closer to them after a certain stage.  The friendship has breath but not much depth.  It becomes frustrating if you want to get to know them better and hang out more but they are perfectly contented to remain just slightly better than acquaintances.  And yet their friendship base keeps growing exponentially.  These people find much pleasure in collecting friends that I call them the friend collectors. 

Reading Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point just confirms my ‘findings’.   He also calls them friend collectors but has another name for them – Connectors.  They have a valuable place in society because they can connect the right people together and make things happen.  When you are in a technological field, chances are, you’ll never meet people from a niche theatrical arena.  But Connectors who know all sorts of people would.

Now, normally folks would not dispense much effort in increasing the number of acquaintances and prefer to put in more effort in cultivating close friendships.  Connectors, however, get a high from getting to know a new acquaintance to put into their rolodex so that they can cultivate the friendship – at an arm’s length, of course.

That is normal when it comes to Connectors.  We know it takes a lot of resources to maintain deep friendships.  Connectors just spread their attention fairly (give or take) to their large brood of friends. 

You may never hope to have a Connector for a best buddy but you can never have a more accepting person to have great conversations with whenever they can spare the time.

Variety is the spice of life. Same goes with foodie friends. There’s not one person that I can hang out with that enjoys everything that I like. Or maybe there is but with time and distance constraints and such, it’s kinda hard to have one foodie buddy accompany me in all my foodie exploits.

But it’s not hard to find kakis (buddies) for separate foodie outings. These are the people whose ears perk up and hands go flying up whenever I mention the following words:

• Mushrooms
• Coffee
• Pork
• Wine and dine
• Japanese
• Seafood
• Steamboat
• Italiano
• Sinful desserts
• Western
• Budget makan
• Indian
• Strange-never-tried-before stuff

To all my foodies buddies, you know who you are. Thank you for enriching my life and it’s true – food tastes better when you are in good company who enjoys every morsel like you do.

It wasn’t that great a day. Discovered some things I didn’t like. Was pissed at everything.

And then I met my buddies. We greeted each other like we haven’t met in a hundred years. Even the waiter thought we were having a long-lost reunion. We all got equal chance to rant about our day and the latest banes in our lives.

Then we thought of a dear friend whom we loved but realized that we know next to nothing about. We hang out a lot with him. We feel absolutely comfortable with him. We could trust him with our deepest and juiciest secrets. But we know zit about him.

“So strange!” we exclaimed.

Then we thought again and felt that as strange as it seems, it is entirely possible to be really close to someone without knowing who they are. Especially if that person is a good listener and who doesn’t mind patiently listening and remembering all your exciting exploits.

We felt a little bad at this realization. It just proves that we are limelight hoggers who love regaling our tales to our quieter friends.

But if it makes everyone happy, why not? We can only hope that they enjoy listening to them as much as we love narrating them with relish and sauce.

:P

Just got this today hot from the oven. Check out the video of my joint bday celebration with Hath (6 months after her birthdate but still, we need to celebrate, kan?) and some pics!

Thanks for making the time to share our joy in growing more mature and beeyootifool. Denise for the prettiest cake a friend has ever baked me. Paulos for the video. Twinnie for availing your cosy place for me to bunk in and for the lovely dim sum feast the next day. Hath for the swanky Coolcat gift – so happy to share a birthday celeb with ya! Azmi, Evie for being there. Tim for your Ipoh road trip pre-taste gift and that magnet. Emily for your sweet presence and hand made gift – loved it! Sistahs (that includes you, Annie!) for the awesome Pictionary gift! Wei, wasn’t easy to feign surprise, ok? Especially when I was involved in the planning committee of ‘What To Get For Ariel’s Birthday’. I so deserve an award for that as what Sistah Paulos said.

Guys, thank you so much for making our birthdays so special!