Friendships

This blog is about friends. And although I know many people have written about this, and have some of the same feelings as I, I still feel a need to blog about this.

Today I organized a dinner for my friends from school, mostly engineers and some Life Science peoples. I thank you all for coming out tonight, and I really appreciate the crowd. Although I ask you, and everyone else too, was our gethering missing something? When you meet with friends, do you feel your missing something?

I think for me, I do feel I am missing something there. Most of my friends are not in Computer Engineering like I. They are mostly in Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, I have no idea why, it just worked out that way. But throughout the year, I would hardly get to see any of them, and because of this we grow apart. Even though every once in a while, we all get together, have a dinner and such, it still does not help enough. I find for me we grow apart, to the extent we can't even to each other. It is hard to keep up friendships while in school, and especially when you are in demanding programs, and don't see each other often.

I find that it gets harder as time goes on to keep these friendships alive. However, I do try. I think I organize the most dinners out of all of us. I don’t mind organizing stuff actually, it took me a couple minutes to write an e-mail, some time to find a restaurant, and then send it off. It took me about an hour, with frequent stops in between to organize this dinner.

But why do we grow apart. I can tell you one thing, in first year when I met most of them, we had some classes together. That helps a lot. However, after that year, we no longer shared classes anymore, so the time we all spent with each other got shorter. Third year came along and it got even worse, we were all busy. Only before the holidays did we get together. So now most of us are working, and we all try to get together once in a while, although in my opinion not enough. However, I think one barrier that stands between us all is distance. We don’t all live within a block of each other, which is a HUGE barrier. I live in Mississauga, which is not very close to North York or other places.

Another barrier that stands between us all is the that I find that people in general that live on the east side (North York, Scarborough, Markham, Richmond Hill, you get it) are not willing to come to Mississauga usually. This is in a lot of cases. I was talking to a friend about this last Friday, we were talking about how Mississauga needs a Chinese dessert place. However, the problem is it won’t survive because the ones in East side can survive because people in Mississauga are willing to go all way over there to get some, whereas the east-siders are not willing to come over here. Now I am saying in general, so nobody bite off my head.

I think for a friendship to last, there has to be a lot of effort if you don’t see each other everyday. This effort has to be from both parties (we’ll call them A and B). Because if one party (A) really wants it, and other party (B) does not really care, but it wouldn’t be bad if it does go well, then it still does not work. Because there comes a time when the A gives up because B is not making any initiative. Not showing initiative shows A that they don’t care whether you are their friend or not. It is not important to them, so why bother with someone who does not care. So fro all you out there, show some interest in a friendship, because it does not hurt to make a friendship. And if you think you have no time for it, then it is obviously evident that you don’t find friendships important, and then why does anybody (including I) even bother?

So I hope all of you spend some time to get to know people. Find the last e-mail you got a hold of, and e-mail that person to get to know them, it is worth your time. I hope one day I will get an e-mail from you.