Friends o' mine

(The Naruto pic above is kinda cheesy, but I heart Gaara.)

I don't consider myself as a friendly person, nor am I known among people by that reputation. I'm mostly a loner (and an expert at that). In school I did my own thing. When everyone were having a good time at the badminton court playing 'galah panjang', I hung out at the library. If anything, that was my reputation.

My class teacher asked me, You go to the library at recess every day? She looked at me with such unbelievability. Short answer: Yes. Slightly longer answer, the one I didn't told her: Yes, because I'm super lame at 'galah panjang' and nobody wants to play anything else.

From childhood to the present, I've been comfortable being outside a group or clique. I do hang out with my regular buddies, but I never see myself as a core member. These people usually do things and go places together, and I'm around mostly to tag along. I'm more a fringe member.

I thought with all this I shouldn't have that many friends. But scrolling up and down my mobile phone address book reveal evidences to the contrary.

Let's see: there's my roommates, coursemates, schoolmates, classmates, people from the same college as I am, former team member from other courses who worked with me in management subjects, anime, manga & comics 'kakis', game 'kakis', people I know from the 'surau', neighbours, juniors, seniors, lecturers, mentors, advisers, intellectual sparring partners, those have helped save my skin at one time or many times over – How did this list get so long?

I do feel bad about not keeping contact with them. Sometimes I feel when I needed them, I kept them close. But when I don't anymore, I go my own way. I feel kinda selfish (and as I've been told, it's the worst kind of fish).

I try to make up for this during festivities. Thank God for multiple SMSes. A warm, fuzzy feeling trickles through my being when the recipients sends back a reply. It's great to know that they still at least remember you and keeping your number. Nowadays I try to contact as many friends as much as my mobile phone plan allows me, insya-Allah. And there's also IM and email for my faraway friends.

I'm writing all this mainly because I'm meeting with a couple of old friends from school soon. One of them is getting married and he insisted that we meet in person so he can hand me the invitation. Another is a proud father of a new bouncing baby girl, a dude whose calmness and perseverance I greatly envied, back when we were studying together.

I ran into another old friend this morning. Turns out she's a bank officer at my school's branch. (For last three years!)

And to friends who visits this blog to keep in touch with me all this while. Muchas gracias.