Sam and I talked about maintaining friendships, and thought of several friends with whom we have a strong continuous relationship although we rarely catch up or speak to each other. Yet we know that at a pinch, we would drop everything and fly to their aid, no questions asked. And they'd do the same for us.
Two of them live in KL, so I reached out to both but one was in Australia. We surprised the other by getting the kids to invite her for dinner near our hotel; Selinna is their god-mother. And true enough, we easily caught up and promised to try going to Scotland together for Sean's graduation.
Today, we met Laila, Kamal and their daughters - she and I went to uni together and have not met for 35 years until recently when she found me on FB. We have a soft spot for each other, and over lunch I realised that we were a bit like siblings in how we are interested in the more mundane aspects of our lives. Even in uni, when she talked to me about her thoughts about her relationship with then boyfriend now husband. Now she talks about sending her youngest, her son who is in Year 1 of architecture school - and we agreed that perhaps he can train under Sean.
Yesterday, I was very pleased to see the hugs Sam gave to SL at lunch - like how a mother would embrace a daughter. Today, I received hugs usually reserved for fathers from another of our borrowed children - Jenny who coincidentally was staying in the hotel room next to ours. Just yesterday I mentioned to Sam that this is the locality where Jenny regularly roams and takes photographs and records conversations with street side peddlers of food snacks. (which she is usually seen with, in small plastic bags: one snack item per bag).
I worry about her.
We chatted about the possibility of her re-entering her field of study, and offered to help as a catalyst in the form of a small project that we could work together on.
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