You start to get wary of people in the throes of arty-farty bullshit in my line of work; when they start waxing lyrical about, say, the “eternity between the falling dewdrop and the earth” you should squint, twiddle your eyebrows if you’re capable, brandish your cruxifix or perform any other outrageous, melodramatized gesture of abhorrence.

I recently met up with a friend from Singapore — ye gods, sometimes I miss that place so much it’s a palpable pain in my chest — and we talked and talked and talked for two straight hours. I wish I had more time, and I wish he did, but he wasn’t there for just idle chit-chat. We exchanged goings-on in our lives with each other, but in a very butch and touching way, if you know what I mean.


(But I swear I was happy. And I still am. The past 4 to 5 years have been really crazy without the gang.)

But the thing I’ve noticed is, with old friends, you tend to reach a stage in the conversation when our common experiences engender really bad abstractions. I mean, comical expressions that are so cliche they can’t help but to be true — as far as our own experiences are concerned. He works in the government there, and once described a colleague coming up to him complaining about how entrenched policy was, how they couldn’t be creative and explore. My friend has this really incredulous scowl that he displays from time to time, and he said, scowl on display: “Shaddup and cut the crap lah, this is the government. What did you expect? You want all that you work in the private sector lah. You’re working in the government for an iron rice bowl”.

And then we started griping about that spurious generalization concerning people and whining.

Uh, huh. But we didn’t stop there: we talked about how people tend to be transient, how life tends to give you what you deserve and how the pasture’s always greener on the other side. I only realized just how meaninglessly stupid we were when I was driving off from the hotel.

Maybe that was a bit harsh. The fact of the matter is, all the generalizations aren’t going to make living life any easier. I know for a fact that he appreciates that observation, and I’m starting to understand it bit by bit.