I spent perhaps a total of two hours exchanging emails with my two dearest friends, R in Spain, and W in The Netherlands. M, the other member of our gang of four is still in Pinas, savoring the last few days of her break from Nihonggo Land. I should be guilty, still taking time to email and smile and laugh silently at the exchanges despite a looming deadline at work. But Nah! I’d manage it. Besides, why sacrifice friendship and a little leisure for work, when you can juggle both?
The truth is I did tell of a few of my friends YM-ing me today that I was busy. Which I was but I always have time for these three. It may be the bonds we’ve formed, the fact that coming from the same industry, and having been friends for some time, we kind of click despite the distance and our divergent, like really divergent tastes--in men, women, food, and shopping or the lack of interest thereof. Haha.
Remember that cliche? How there are friends who may not always be there to go to movies or hang out with you because they’re busy or they’re really far away like in different continents but that when shit happens and you need someone to be your grief absorber, someone you can use as a wall to whom you can wail all your miseries, you know that they’re just a chat or an email away. And that if it’s at all possible, you are assured that they’ll do their best to come to you. Well, I think this is how it is with the four of us. Something just clicked. We share our joys, fears, sometimes stupid tactics, and of course, secrets. And though we have really different temperaments, when it comes to the nitty-gritty of being appreciated as a person, as someone best-friend worthy, we're there for each other.
Sure, it could be that it's a factor that we’re from the same school. Which we love by the way. And as a side note, it’s where M and I spent our bonding day out last December, just walking and sitting on the grass long enough to capture this:
It may be because the three of us have been friends since college, M being a year behind us. And being in the same industry, having all jumped from one country to another, we kind of understand in a level that comes only with shared experiences, the travails of our subspecies of OFW. We know where each of us are coming from when one gets frustrated with the work, we try to help each other, sometimes even ask each other technical answers to work-related things.
But the major part, what really sealed our closeness into this seemingly fluid thing never to dry out, was the time spent working and running around London.
In the course of our almost everyday emails, these stuffs never fail to pop out of the conversation:
Our favorite Pub which is just a stone’s throw away from our office in Hammersmith
Our favorite Japanese restaurant in Leicester Square.
Pity, though, I don’t have a good picture of our favorite hang-out place, M’s flat at 44 Holland Gardens.
Or a good picture of the four of us together.
Now add a pinch of nomadic streak, our itchy feet always longing for little pockets of adventure. A perfect recipe for friendships that come with a lifetime warranty.
It’s another reason why M and I, the half who chose to come back to Asia, are now raring to win a ticket back to Europe. :)
