Of Homes and Friends

A few nights ago, I had dinner with a friend that I hadn't seen for a while. But we still connected through Facebook every now and then. Love Facebook for that. During dinner, we had a wonderful conversation. This friend of mine, has been in Hong Kong for a long time. Way longer than me. He's a fellow Christian too. It was nice having a brother encouraging me. During the conversation, two topics left an impact on me.

We were talking about home. I mentioned to him that each time I touch down at Hong Kong International Airport, I feel that I'm home. He asked, what about when I touch down at Changi Airport? I looked at him and pondered for a couple of minutes and he asked, the feeling of home is no as strong as before? And I nodded. I thought more about it. Well, it's a different feeling. Sure, I'm glad to touchdown in Spore because I get to see Babe and my family and have the yummy food that I love. But when I touch down in HKIA, I feel home. I'm almost grateful when the plane is descending and I know that, yes, I'll be home in an hour or so. Even when I'm planning for my holidays this summer, I chose to fly via Hong Kong instead of stopping over in Seoul or Tokyo.

The next topic that we touched on was on friendships. He and I share a couple of mutual friends and a couple of friends that we hardly speak too. And it was in this conversation that some things stuck me too. Friendship is very intricate. It's hard to explain. There are some people that we get along fabulously. But there are some that we start off getting along fabulously and then somewhere along the way, things happen and either we cut them off or we get cut off from them. The friendship may not be strong enough to stand through issues or maybe we chose not to let it stand through issues. The truth of the matter, there's never really who's right and wrong. Then I thought about my friends back in Spore. I must admit when in the beginning I would meet my friends or ex-colleagues whenever I head back to Singapore. However as time passed, I met up with fewer friends. I chose to meet lesser people. I became very selective who I wanted to meet up with.

I wonder what will my thoughts on homes and friends in 5 years' time. Come back in 5 years and we'll see.