Snubbed!

I went to an old friend's birthday party last night. I mean a really OLD friend. We got to know each other during a French immersion programme in Sec 3, maybe the most memorable trip of my life. It was my first month-long overseas trip with a group of 15-year-olds, away from parents. It comprised a two-week stay at a French correspondant's house and another two weeks travelling around France with the other students. What heaven.

During the trip, six of us became close friends - all of us being from the "non-elite" schools. I guess you could call it selection by elimination :P Four of us formed the core group - two guys and two girls and we used to have heated, long squabbles on the train going to and from French lessons. One guy and myself were "conservatives". We believed in marriage, fidelity, filial piety, loyalty to country, etc etc . Could be our unbringing in a very Chinese school :P The other guy and girl were the complete opposite - believed in free love, cohabitation, etc etc. I shall very innovatively call these two, Liberal Guy and Liberal Girl. Myself and the other guy shall be called “Me” and Conservative Guy :) Besides the four of us, there were another two guys. One could be considered an extremely prim and proper teenager in those days. He would stuff his fingers in his ears when the guys were telling crude jokes, just to illustrate. Even myself, prudish as I was at 15 years old, was not above indulging in a few crude jokes and laughing myself silly. I shall call him Mr Prim-and-Proper. The last guy of our gang was a rich kid who was very laid back and easy-going, but didn't seem to hold very strong views, or at least if he did, didn’t put them across too strongly. He also didn’t have a chance to join us in our ideological debates as he lived on the other side of town (actually he lived in town) and didn't take the train like the rest of us (ah, the benefits of being middle-class). All 5 of us lived in the east. It was to Rich Boy's birthday dinner that I went to.

As I had caught up with Conservative Guy, Mr Prim-and-Proper and Rich Boy 1-2 months ago, one of the highlights of going to this dinner for me was that I would finally get to catch up with Liberal Girl after so many years. I had heard that she was based in another country, China? Russia? Anyway, it was some exotic country, after having left her former job to study, and that she was now leading some exciting life cycling around the world and being super fit. There is also this other little thing between me and Liberal Girl. Back during the French trip and the days taking French together, I had the nagging feeling that she didn't like me much. She was always closer to the other two guys. But I always treated her like a good friend, cos she was one of our gang which was very close. However, I realised halfway that she seemed to have a crush on Liberal Guy, with whom I made the mistake of hooking up with after the French trip. Ok ok, I was young, I was impressionable and being overseas in France with 30 other hormone-charged teenagers didn’t help. Anyway, it seemed very simple. He liked me, I didn’t mind him, so voila! The fact that our world views were as different as black and white didn't cross our minds as being a problem at all. Aah, the recklessness and optimism of youth :) But after the trip, the romantic feelings slowly turned into a strong friendship as we spent more and more time together and really got to know each other beyond the jokes and repartees. He was an intelligent, witty and good-looking guy, but it turned out he was rather needy and we didn’t quite agree what level of intimacy was appropriate at that time. I think we sort of just became good friends, and eventually split up in JC 1. I must say I didn't really mourn the passing of the relationship and after that, I had the distinct feeling that Liberal Girl felt rather sorry for Liberal Guy and thought I was being so very nasty to him and that I didn’t deserve him in the least. I believe I actually heard that from someone!

Anyway, it has been years since then, and I was quite excited to see if she had changed, what she had been up to, and whether she still held the liberal and radical views she did. She was the missing link in the puzzle of our group I wanted to piece together.

Being extremely excited, though more than an hour late (gosh, these Bukit Timah houses), I sat down quite far diagonally from her and at the first pause in conversation around the table, immediately asked her what she has been up to. But I soon realised that the feeling was mutual. The conversation went something like:

"Hi!!! So where are you now???"

"Oh, I'm in Hong Kong." Silence. She stares at me. Isn't she supposed to say more?

"Oh ya ok! I meant where are you working now?"

"A law firm." She looks at me apologetically, like waiting for me to end the conversation.

"Uh-huh" I try not to roll my eyes, "What's the name?"

"It's a British law firm, you won't know it." This was getting weird. This wasn’t supposed to turn into an interrogation, so I stay silent, knowing she would have to say the name at some point.

"It's XXYY." She finally blurts out very quickly. It's true. I couldn't remember it the next second :P

Finally she asks me, are you still at XXYY?

"Yes!" I give her quite a comprehensive run-through of where I've been since we graduated. Then I ask again "So you are a lawyer now?"

"Yeah."

"But you went somewhere to study right?"

"Ya I went to US for a while to study" This other girl chipped in "Hey, where were you were USA?? When were you there? Blah blah blah..." And the two of them started talking very animatedly together. I was completely left out cold. I waited patiently for a while, then realised they were not about to stop anytime soon. Feeling like I was in twilight zone, I turned to talked to the person on my right. The situation repeated itself another 2 more times. Every time the conversation around the table took a breather, I would ask her another question. But the moment she finished her first sentence, the girl would ask another question and the two of them would go into their two-person world. It was so unreal I wanted to make a face at Liberal Girl to say "Isn’t she rude?”. But she didn’t even glance my way.

Sometime through the dinner, I decided that it wasn't worth it. If she didn't want to fill me in the details of her life, so be it. I wasn't going to wrangle it out of her any longer. This was more painful than pulling teeth. So I relaxed and started taking an interest in this other girl sitting opposite me and the girl on my right and we started having our own conversation.

Time flew, and soon it was 1130pm. As we got up to leave, some muttering about church the next day, with phrases like "830 service", Mr Prim-and-Proper offered to send me and Liberal Girl back since we all lived in the same area. In the car, we started talking about the value of marriage (ah, some old topics die hard) and why people get married (never thought I'd ever have to answer that in my life, I mean, isn't it one of those basic things?), and what was happening with her love life, and what was happening with Prim-and-Proper. Then as we were nearing her house, she heard this French song in his car and went beserk with excitement and asked him to send her the song. Then she realized she didn’t have his email address and started saying we should exchange hp nos and emails. All three of us whipped out our hps. Then she keyed in the guy's hp no and email, sent him an sms on the spot and got out of the car. I was quite shocked. What about me? Thankfully I already had her hp no and email, but she never really gave it to me. I got them from mutual friends.

Anyway, these few incidences left me feeling rather wounded. I realised anew that she really didn't like me, having been snubbed three or four times in a night, a first in a very long time!! But as I thought it over in my head, I realized this wasn’t going to change the way I feel about her. To me, she’s still a good friend. I guess that’s what friendship is all about isn’t it? There will always be friends you treasure more than they treasure you, and instead of moping about it and blaming them, I guess I should count it fortunate that I value them so much.