Some mates you have to book an appointment with. Are they worth it?

Is it just me or are people misunderstanding the values of friendship?

Exams are over and now I’m wrapped up in the world or full-time (or almost full time) work. Gym at 6am, work from 9am, home for around 6pm after a very long bike ride, food and then sports, friends, Chinese cramming. I often lose track of time. However recently a few things some friends have said to be have really echoed in my mind for a long time…

After a few things which have gone on over the past few months, I’ve decided I’m going to study at Beijing University for 2 years, instead of the original first-planned, one year long course. I’m a tad nervous, but I’ve decided to study on a 4-week extra intensive course this summer, just to give me a kick start. Plans with accommodation however fell through, Uni halls were too pricey, and so I was stuck. Until my friend, Serina made the effort to help me look for flats by posting on various internet sites, making phone calls and even planning to meet my future Chinese house mates in Beijing in order to ‘vet’ them before giving me the ‘all-clear’ to move in with them. I felt very humbled by all of this. I even felt indebted to her to some degree. Though this is what friends do, and this is why you have good friends like Serina is to me. I found it most obscure that I was mulling this over in my mind. People these days are so concerned with what they can get from each other, who they can profit and benefit from someone, that they forget how to be friends with people.

A recent conversation on the same issue made me think about this further; people don’t seem to have close friendships anymore. Not everyone, though a proportion. To some, the majority are merely drink-buddies, who call you up on a Saturday night so they don’t have to go to bars on their own. This isn’t a bad thing, as often these people are the most fun. But often people seem to have two groups of mates: the ‘drink’ mates and the ‘talk-to’ mates. If you’re making the effort to read this, think for just one second. How many friends do you have in your phonebook who you can call up and say ‘hey man, I’m feeling really pants right now, and wanted to chat?’

I think I have a handful, I’m lucky though.

I’m making more of an effort these days to keep in touch and spend more time with people, even though it is all too easy to drift apart. But there are some friends who you always have to book an appointment with. You’ll want to go to the cinema, but they’ll say they haven’t any money, yet three days later they update their facebook status with :



‘Joe Bloggs is loving the cinema with his mates’.





It makes you think why on earth bother with such people?

Olga made a very good comment to me. Blunt, but it hit the nail on the head. She said ‘Aaron, they’re your friends, and you yourself chose them’. Maybe I need to start being a little less sentimental and realise when it’s time to give up on some people.

You can have a mate a year and the friendship can be lost, yet you can have a friend a week and it be a life-long friendship.

It’s a damn shame I’m leaving for Beijing so soon. After a troublesome year, things over the past two months have gone great. I’ve never been happier, despite the occasional ups and downs. I’ve got some very good friends who have only just recently come into my life, and they’re the people who I can call for anything, the people who sort out living arrangements for me, the people who cook for me, help me move house, tell me how it really is, give a damn and the great people who actually care and make me laugh.

So Andy, Kris, Ali, Olga, Serina, Jonny, Vivian, and Gav, cheers guys. You’re all top banana (even if you do take the michael when I climb trees and pose in them) ;-)