Friendship thoughts

Friendship is a weird thing. There is a saying that there's nothing better than an old friend--to me an old friend would be people who I grew up with... the friends who I spent my elementary and high schools with... but this time the night where I met up with the people from MFS, I really didn't seem to 'fit in'. All we talked about were what happened to other classmates, most of whose names I forgot already... other than that, we had absolutely nothing in common! I even got a little uneasy when I was taking the MTR with a couple of them... one of whom was very good friend with me before!!

This saddens me. To know that after all these years I spent in the place I grow up in, I only retained one friend (who I still consider as my best friend, but she lives in LA and not HK now, happily married). Perhaps it's a fact of life...

Thinking from all the lunch/dinner gatherings in HK that I had with friends, the most enjoyable times I had were with a good friend who I knew from high school (in Canada) - who I still think is the only person who didn't change that much after going back to HK to work... and the 2 friends/excoworkers I knew from work (who went back to HK/China 3 and 1.5 year ago). Both of these friends are married with children already... they gave me good advice about a lot of things, and most of all we could share a lot more about our lives...

I have always liked people who are geniune - people who talk to me like they really mean what they say and not just saying things for the sake of politeness... sadly I find that it's easy to guard oneself up when two people have not seen each other a lot. I experience that to a certain extent in this trip--even from people who I know not for that long (my definition of long is over 10 years)...

This makes me wonder - what will happen in say 5-10 years? How many more "friends" are friends only because they have once crossed my path? How many friends will I have who actually will be true friend who I can share with? How many people will I be a friend of, who people will be comfortable in sharing their lives with?

I suppose all this is an unknown... waiting to be revealed...