Can we find true friendship in this dog-eat-dog world? I was constantly warned about not putting false hope in finding true friendship, especially friendship built after undergrad years. This is because the friendship will no longer be genuine. The friendship is more likely to be complicated with other realistic issues due to the astute behaviour of human instinct and thus vulnerability-prone.
I did uphold that belief seeing the fact that all my closest pals and my best friend were my childhood/schoolmates. Not that all my nonchildhood friends are pretentious to me. Somehow I just don't feel that close, to share all of myself because I fear of exposing too much of myself and perhaps there might be some conflicts of interests.
One of the fruitful accomplishments in my doctorate life here is to know my boon companion, AA. This also breaks my strong belief of finding genuine friendship outside childhood!
I knew nothing about AA before I came here. I was told that there would be a PhD student coming from a country, which I did my undergrad, who would be here to do a 3-month collaboration with my new lab. Upon my first day of arrival in this new country, I was introduced to AA. The moment she spoke, I felt myself feeling familiar with the good old English accent which I missed deeply after leaving that country since my graduation. She's residing in another city there but that's already good enough for me to recollect my fond memories of a country I'd resided for 5 years.
Believe it or not?! The fabulous bit was AA was not only originally from the same home country as I was, but she was also from the same hometown! Her family emigrated to a new country when she's four. That's so cool. Man, my hometown was not a big city and seeing the fact that I went to her new country to study for 5 years and then we only knew each other in a 3rd country! Yeah, both of us were born in Continent A, went to Continent B separately and only knew each other in Continent C. Gosh, sounds like a drama! NO, I didn't make this up! It's real! Up to these days, my supervisor still brings up this unbelievable truth. *grin*
Another funny bit was after finding out that AA was from my hometown, I called up my mom trying to check out that AA might be my lost contact childhood friend (I was like 4 years old!) who had emigrated to elsewhere. Don't ask me why. Actually AA had nothing to do with this friend and my memory to this long-disappeared friend was utterly vague, I don't know her name, her look, her age, whatever! This must be a strong positive sign between me and AA. Perhaps it was the initial strong bonding between me and AA that made me feel that I'd known AA for a long time.
Though AA is now back to her country, which is ten thousand miles away from here in a different continent. We still constantly stay in touch (thanks to the marvellous invention of internet) and we talk about everything, all the ups and downs, all the happy and sad problems in life. We console and support each other. We complain about our problems of our social, work, family, anything you can name about.
In our recent chat, she wrote this out, which I found my tears rolling down my cheeks as my heart felt the warmth. :)
*I'm really honest when i say that im really glad that i met you in (where I'm residing now). You actually came at a really good time ..... i felt really really homesick but you arrived and i'm glad we became really good friends...*
AA, I'm really glad to know you too! I enjoyed your companionship during our trip to Anaheim this year. I thank you for always being so supportive and willing to listen to all my grudges and mumbles grumbles . Thank you for all your enlightening advice. Thank you for the friendship. I especially treasure and cherish our long distance friendship.
It's so great to know you! Knowing a bosom friend here has already convinced me that my decision of coming to a new country to do a doctorate degree a wise one. I'm very looking forward to meet up with you soon!
♥ every page of my imagination
