Having real friends where you can have fun with and be yourself is actually something that I truly take for granted. I was one of the first in my circle of friends to get married. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that, but what makes it hard is that then I had to move to a faraway country (7 hours flight, and airlines ticket never got cheaper although oil price had free-fall).
When I think back about how me and my girlfriends eventually got so close, even after graduation, is because we spent so much time together - literally almost everyday, in classes and doing group assignments! And after graduation, I still love having catch up over lunch with them on Fridays or just hang out on the weekends, and I would never ever miss them! We once had an 'arisan' group for all the girls in my 2006 class. I attend their meet ups religiously, but perhaps I'm the only one who didn't participate in the 'arisan' itself, haha.
At first I thought, "don't worry, I'll make friends eventually." Unfortunately, now I'm in my third year in Australia, and I still can't replace my best friends. I can go as far as "friends", but not to the extent that I'm comfortable to talk about personal things. FYI, if any of you have met me before and think I'm a quite boring person to have convo with, I maybe am because I tend to avoid any personal questions or anything that I think may offend someone. And perhaps because I don't know much about Australian TV shows or what's happening in the news either, which really doesn't help :D.
I have a little bit of issue developing that genuine and fun 'friendship' at the office as well since the first time I arrived. Everyone in my team is really nice, but one thing I immediately noticed - which I'm not really a fan of - is that they just (almost) never have lunch together, with the exception of team lunch. I don't know whether it's the custom here, or what. I even have to ask a colleague to understand this, "why does everyone in the team never have lunch together??". I mean, I would like to know more about my colleagues' life outside of work, but since they're so busy (maybe), they love to have lunch at their desk! And I think the most appropriate time to have a casual chat about things outside of work is during lunch time, not in between work. To be honest, I sometimes envy the neighbouring team who often had lunch together and just chat about random stuff. Hhh... how I missed it so much. Eventually, after realising that our team never ever had a team lunch during the course of 1 year, I had to ask my manager to have one as a 'end of year party' sort-of-thing. Thankfully she approved :).
Now I am so looking forward to my next trip to Indonesia and catch up with my girlfriends! ... it's still 10 months away though * facepalm *.
*sorry for the really bad picture quality, I took them from Whatsapp :D*
If I had lunch at work, I'd have it with you :)
ReplyDelete