Last saturday evening an old friend Stephen sent me a message on Facebook. He had flown into Kuala Lumpur from London via Bangkok, and would be here for a week. Was I free to meet up?
We met up the next day. He visited our place with his fiancee. We chatted and caught up for about an hour and half, and had a beer together. Then they left for dinner.
We touched on it during our conversation, the fact that it has been 10 years since we met. It didn’t sink in till later though.
We were working together in the same architecture firm during our year out placement. The company comprised eighty-plus architects and engineers. In the whole firm, there were only three East Asians. Me, Stephen, and a middle-aged senior associate. Both of them had grew up or spent a long time in the UK. I, and another Brazilian lady, were the only foreigners.
I was a very quiet person at that time. (I still am, mostly). To be honest, it was because I couldn’t yet hold a conversation with the British. I had nothing to talk to them about. I kept to myself and did my work.
I didn’t apply for any jobs in Scotland, where I was studying, and no London firm replied me. The only reply, interview and later offer was from this practice. It was in a small garden town in the Southeast of England, 30 minutes away from London by train. The kind of town that existed in Enid Blyton’s books.
One cold evening, Flora and I went to a shopping mall the next town over. It was a rare occurrence, to visit a shopping mall in the next town on a weekday night. We probably only did it that one or two times throughout the entire 10 months we were there. I don’t even remember why. But anyhow, we were there, and I bumped into Stephen. We became friends after that.
It’s an unlikely friendship, but that was the norm. In those years, I had a knack of striking random friendships with people (always guys). We introduced our girlfriends to each other, who became our fiancees and wives. We started on our careers, progressed through life. And every once in a few years, our paths would cross somewhere around the world. We’d meet up and get a beer together. I don’t know why things turned out that way, but those are great memories.