Friends

Last month, I was very very busy seeing friends, old and new. It's particularly nice to see old friends who are back in town for short visits and friends I haven't seen in years. I've also been seeing some Hong Kong friends who are usually too busy with their work, but who have had a couple of days off during Christmas.

It's not always easy to arrange gatherings with friends. There are so many considerations such as when and where to meet, what we want to do, what we want to eat, how much we want to spend, etc. Honestly, I no longer care about satisfying everybody. As long as my suggestions aren't offensive (but fortunately, I don't know many vegetarians in Hong Kong - it's nearly IMPOSSIBLE to accomodate vegetarians in Hong Kong!), I'm just happy to be able to gather everybody together.

Unfortunately, this can be a costly time of year. I usually spend less than $20 HKD (around $3 CAD) per meal while eating at the on-campus canteens. When I go out with friends, however, it usually costs anywhere from $50-100 HKD per person, and that's if we're careful enough not to choose the REALLY costly places. Sometimes, I treat my friends, which can double or triple my expenses, but most friends are considerate enough to go Dutch with me; those who are working are usually generous enough to offer to treat me.

Compared to my friends who are working and who live with their parents (so they don't have to pay rent or buy groceries), I'm a bit more sensitive to prices, so I usually choose cheaper alternatives, or at least choices that offer better value for money. We can't go to the cheapest of the cheap, e.g. $10 HKD ($1.50 CAD) wonton noodles because those places rely on high turnover; in other words, they want our asses out of those seats in 15 minutes so that others can slurp their noodles. Some friends of mine who've been working for at least a couple of years are a bit more fussy about the environment too - after all, they don't work from 9am to 8pm, 6 days a week, in order to eat in crowded, noisy, and dirty places. Some of them probably feel this way because they are snobs. Too bad for them. I know millionaires who eat at such places all the time, incognito. Anyway, what puzzles me about my friends who dislike cheap places, even places where we can sit and relax for a while, is that they have no objections to going to bars that are noisier and even more crowded, but where drinks cost $50-100 HKD each. That's one reason why I suspect that they're snobs. Anyway, whether they show it or not, I think my friends are grateful that I always come up with ideas to do things on the cheap.


Seeing old friends makes me think about friendship. I feel fortunate that I've been able to make so many friends in so many places over the years. Living alone in new environments forces me to meet new people, and I'd like to think that I've learned how to and how not to approach and talk to people. Though I've met hundreds, perhaps thousands of people, I've managed to identify nice, considerate, sincere, interesting, and trustworthy people whom I can now call my friends. Whether we only hung out for a couple of days or for several years, the magic of the Internet has allowed me to maintain contact with my friends of all time zones. Even though my best buddy in the whole world since high school is damned busy studying Medicine in Toronto, we chat on MSN Messenger perhaps once a month or so, and if we're lucky, we might see each other once a year. At least that's how it's been in the last few years, when we almost never lived in the same city.

When I meet friends I haven't seen in some time, there is usually much to talk about. We usually update each other on new developments and share our aspirations, thoughts, and feelings with each other. My most genuine friends not only give me encouragement, but also care about me enough to criticise me if I am wrong, though they try their best to do so without hurting my feelings. By contrast, some so-called friends may give plenty of empty praise, but hold back on the constructive criticism, even if it would save me from harm. On the other hand, other so-called friends hold back on encouragement, but instead criticise me endlessly, probably in order to make themselves feel smarter or better.

I continue to make lots of new friends, and now that I'm a bit older and wiser, I sometimes wonder whether or not somebody is worthy of being my friend. I try to be friendly with everybody, and I like to help people who would help me if I were in their shoes, but to bring a relationship to a new level of intimacy and companionship requires some careful evaluation. A good indicator of whether or not someone is genuinely nice is to see how he or she treats other people. I've known people who treat me with the utmost courtesy, but treats everyone around them, including restaurant staff, classmates/coworkers, parents, siblings, etc., like crap. I've learned that some of these people treated me nicely because they wanted something from me at the time. I don't claim to know all of the ways to gauge whether a person is worthy of being a friend, but I CAN say that I learn from my mistakes. Now, I'm even trying to learn skills such as how to hint to unkind, insincere, inconsiderate, uninteresting, etc. people that I'm not interested in being friends with them. I have to be especially careful if these people are neighbours, coworkers, friends of my friends or relatives, etc.

Anyway, to all of my friends, I appreciate your friendship, and if I gave you the URL to this blog (or if I paste these entries into emails and send them to you), it means that I consider you worthy of my friendship, and I sure hope you feel the same way about me.