My friends in my immediate circle right now are all people whom I’ve met whilst out clubbing. And most times, I don’t see them till the weekends. During the week we may have instant message chats but we don’t meet up or have deep-meaningfuls.

It had got me thinking about the depth of these friendships. I had worried if that is all there is to them? We mostly only meet up for drinks, dancing and laughter - should I be expecting more from these relationships, and should I be doing more to deepen our friendships? As we age, and if our bodies dictate that we can’t club as much anymore, would I still see them or have anything to talk to them about? Would I gradually lose these friendships?

But what happened this year had allayed these fears of mine. I’ve gotten closer to these friends. We talk a whole lot more and about other things besides music and clubbing. We have met up for lunches and dinners, and I’ve visited their houses. I’ve seen their faces away from the disco lights and luckily for me, I like what I saw in the broad daylight and even better is that they feel the same about me.

I’ve also realised that friendships can develop over time. What may start out as something shallow may deepen. Though I also know that some friendships would stay shallow and possibly fade away over time. Or people change which is inevitable. But having a common interest, even when it’s as frivolous as clubbing, is what brings people together. How we maintain that bond then is entirely up to ourselves. Deepening and strengthening that bond may take effort but it’s a reward unto itself, and a mighty satisfying one at that.

They say that there are three certainties in life: change, death, and taxes. To that I’d add: if you open your door to a couple of Jehovah Witnesses, they will keep coming back.

A couple of months ago, my brother opened the door to Mandarin-speaking ones. My brother’s Mandarin was patchy at best. So he said to them in Mandarin, “My Mandarin is very patchy”. To that, they said some pleasantries, handed him the literature which was in Chinese (natch) and left.

This morning, I opened the door to a pair of Japanese speaking ones. As soon as they saw me, they started speaking in Japanese. In my morning daze, it took a while for it to register. Luckily I know a little bit of Japanese from my Japanese girls chasing days, so I said to them, “I’m not Japanese, I’m Chinese”.

They apologised profusely - I recognised some of the words, but they kept speaking in Japanese and very quickly too, which lost me completely. So I kept repeating “I’m not Japanese, I’m Chinese”. I was hoping that that would make them switch to English but that just made them apologise even more.

So I kept smiling and bowing, and at the same time slowly pushing the door close. And finally, I got rid of them.

This episode and my brother’s make me suspect that they’ve got special team members for the different nationalities that they bring in from time to time. But the snag is that they don’t speak English. In their minds, they probably don’t need to because they are targeting specific nationalities.

But why did they send Japanese ones after failing with my brother with the Mandarin speaking ones? Wouldn’t the logical alternative be English speaking ones? Or were they just trying to throw as many Asian nationalities at us until they got it right?

It’d be interesting if they send Korean ones next because I only know how to say “hello” in Korean. If they knock on the door and I am the one greeting them, the conversation would probably go like this in Korean:

Hello, we are Jehovah Wit …
Hello.
Yes, hello, good morning. We are Jehovah …
Hello.
*puzzled* We are Je …
Hello.
Are you ok?
Hello.
*the other one pipes in* I think he’s mocking us.
Are you mocking us, sir?
Hello.
Idiot.
Hello.
I hope you burn in hell!
Hello.

An nyoung ha seh yo!

So there I was enjoying the music and the ambiance, and the guy next to me started talking to me …

Dude: So yeah I just moved here from over east.
Me: Yeah? Where from?
Dude: Newcastle.
Me: Ah yeah. What’s it like over there?
Dude: It’s nice you know, not like a big city. Very simple way of life. Very Aussie.
Me: Uhuh.
Dude: Not like Sydney or Melbourne, where you know, it’s play spot-the-Aussie. *suddenly realises my decidedly non-white face* Oh, no offense.
Me: None taken.
Dude: But I just think like if you come here, you should at least learn to speak English you know?
Me: I agree. Be proud of your culture but make an effort to join the rest of us.
Dude: Yeah yeah that’s what I mean. So you look pretty happy tonight.
Me: Uhuh.
Dude: Are you on something?
Me: Maybe.
Dude: Know where I can get some?
Me: Nah sorry.
Dude: Any spares on you?
Me: Nope.

We chatted a bit more after this. How I’ve been here 20 years and he could tell from the way I talked; how it’s so hard to get drugs when one’s new in town because no one trusts you (too right!). He bought a round of drinks, and I bought him a round. After that I joined my friends on the other side of the club.

A tip for the kiddies: anyone who asks you about getting some drugs the first time you meet them could be an undercover policeman. So play it safe and feign ignorance!

When I was young, I wanted to be cool. Or have cool friends.
Now I realise.
Being cool is superficial and pointless.
Nobody cares after you leave high school.

When I was young, all I wanted to do was to kiss a girl. Any girl.
Now I know.
There’s a big difference between kissing a girl that I cared about, and kissing one that I don’t.
Same goes for sex.

When I was young, I was shy and awkward.
Now I’m not.
I like my own skin and I enjoy being around other people.
Especially women.

When I was young, I drove fast and recklessly. It was a thrill.
Now I understand.
It was stupid, selfish and dangerous.
What might have happened?

When I was young, I didn’t understand my parents. I didn’t understand moving.
Now I do.
They made sacrifices and gave up what they knew,
so that we may have the lives that we have now.

When I was young, I appreciated the simple things.
And I still do, and it’s how I stay happy.
I only need my family, friends, food and shelter.
I have changed a lot as I grew older, but I’m glad this part of me never did.

This is my second month with the iPhone 3G. For the most part, I love using it and it has been a worthwhile purchase. Before I get to how it’s changed my daily commute and other things, I’ll list the things that I wish could have been done better or that took a while to get used to.

The not-so-good includes:

1. It can’t recognise numbers stored on the SIM card, and therefore cannot transfer them from the SIM to the phone. To get all my contacts onto the phone, I had to use my colleague’s Mac and its bluetooth connection to first transfer the numbers off my Nokia 6280 onto the address book in his Mac, and then use iTunes to transfer the numbers to my iPhone. If I didn’t have access to a Mac, well I probably would have had to do it manually.
2. You can’t easily save numbers from calls missed, received, and dialed, or in text messages. There’s just no function to do so. You have to manually key the number in by flipping back and forth between the call log and the virtual keypad, which thankfully retains what you type as you flip between screens. Otherwise, this would have been an even bigger pain.

   (Update 6th Jan 2009 - ok I’m a dork. I’ve now figured out that touching on the blue arrow is different to touching the actual number that it is next to. It takes you to a screen that allows you to save the number. :P)

3. I’m ok with the camera being 2 Megapixel but the focus is slow and it’s kinda fiddly to use because the shutter button is virtual. This makes it hard to take self-potraits or reverse shots. And you can’t do MMS which is a glaring deficiency in such a multimedia capable phone. Oh yeah, no video either but that’s not that big a deal.
4. I’ve mentioned this before and that is: the virtual keyboard takes a little while getting used to. And even after that, you can’t do single-hand texting easily like you can with a phone with a more tactile feel. So you can forget about texting coherently if you are holding a drink in your other hand.
5. You can do your own custom ring tones but it’s not as straight forward as copying a sound or a song onto the phone. And you can’t do custom message tones, even if you buy them from the iTunes store. Because the phone just doesn’t have that capability. And that sucks. I miss my Yoda message tone that says, “Mmm, message from the dark side you have.”
6. The phone software updates can potentially fail and you will have to restore your phone from the automatic backups (now I know why iTunes do it!). Which is not so bad if it didn’t mean having to sync up my songs to the phone again. Depending on how many songs you had on the phone, this can take a while. Because yeah, when the updates fail? It wipes the hard disk clean. Oh you’d also have to re-download any apps which you have downloaded from the iTunes Apps store previously. This area of the phone should have been done much better than this.

Ok so those are my major complaints. But I still enjoy using the phone a lot. The big sell for me? 3G Internet surfing and the iPod touch functionalities. Thanks to both of these, my daily commute feels shorter and is much more enjoyable.

Despite reports of 3G reception problems, on my daily route to and from work the signals are strong enough for me to have a good surfing experience. I use Google Reader, and news sites like News.com.au and NYTimes.com - all of which have iPhone versions so they are light on the multimedia and loads up fairly quickly. The amount of information on screen is just right, and text is easy to read and scrolling is smooth. Try and read a full size site though and that’s when you really notice the inadequacy of the screen, so I don’t.

Checking my Gmail is also simple and easy to set up. I don’t compose or reply to messages though because that would take too much effort. Other useful internet applets includes Yahoo! Weather and Google Maps, both of which I use quite often.

There are also other apps, free or paid ones, available from the iTunes Apps store. So far, I’ve got the Facebook one and the New York Times one.

And finally, the iPod touch. I love it, I don’t know how I lived without it. I’m now listening to more music than I did before. I’ve been ripping a lot of CDs, and in addition to what I normally download (shhh), I’ve been purchasing more music as well in CD form and from the iTunes store. The iTunes store is quite well done because if I find one song that I like, it recommends 5 more to me. This can get addictive and it’s very easy to just click and purchase more than you want to.

To really enjoy the iPod, I’d highly recommend getting a pair of 3rd party headphones. I got a pair of Seinheiser in-ear ones from the Apple store. And these are great. Like how you’d press normal earphones into your ear to hear better, except you don’t have to because these block out outside noise. You don’t have to turn it up so it’s good for your hearing and you don’t disturb others. Only downside is that it can get quite mucky because you are pushing them into your ears, so you will have to clean them after every use.

And lastly, because you are constantly touching the phone it will require daily cleaning if you want it to look its best all the time. Oh yeah I almost forgot - the phone itself? Call reception and quality is nothing fantastic, but nothing shoddy either. It’s adequate.

As a package though, you are getting so much more than a phone. Because of the way it looks, the touch screen, and how it feels in your hand, the whole thing just rocks.

Watching the Chinese Olympics during the past 2 weeks, and especially the opening and closing ceremonies where Chinese art and culture were represented so impressively, I can’t help but feel a tinge of pride of being Chinese. Even though I’m two generations removed from my Chinese roots (born in Malaysia, transplated to Australia), culturally I’m Chinese even though by nationality, I’m Australian.

Like I’m sure how an Irish, Greek or Italian Australian would feel when something special happens in their motherlands, so it was that I felt pride by association. But of course, lest we forget there are still many problems within and outside of China. The issue of Tibet, the enormous gap between the rich and sophisticated urbanites and the poor and disenfranchised in the city slums and rural areas; cultural suppression of ethic minorities; indirect Chinese sponsorship of African dictatorships in exchange for steady supplies of raw materials and fuel.

So yeah, China has put on a great show for us during the past 16 days. But when the factories open tomorrow, and the roads clogged with vehicles and the air becomes murky with pollution again, let’s hope that China can create a clean and harmonious environment in and around itself, metaphorically and literally, without having to resort to a show to distract us from the reality.

phre3a @ stock.xchng

Being the good neutral friend takes effort. Picture these dilemmas:

• There’s a gathering, a dinner or a house party, clubbing, going out. Everyone knows each other except some of the people in the group aren’t told about it. Over the week, you strive to not talk about the gathering to those who aren’t going. But they ask you what you are doing on the weekend. Do you lie or tell the truth?

  Me: Lying would just make a bigger mess of things, so I’d just tell the truth but I’d employ some tact and try not to sound too excited about it.

• You know friend A for a long time. Then you meet friend B, a long time friend of friend A. Friend B and you click very well and you end up seeing each other more than friend A. Do you feel guilty about it, and do you try to split your time between the two equally, or try to involve both friend A and friend B in whatever plans you might have?

  Me: if I know friend B no longer enjoys friend A’s company then I’d try to split my time equally. Forced company is not good company. And if you are fair about it, then the problem between friend A and friend B isn’t really yours to worry about.

• You hear friend A make a small complain about friend B. It’s something really petty and it’s probably nothing. Do you tell friend B anyway? And do you care that friend A will know that you were the one who told friend B?

  Me: I’d shut up about it. I won’t even add my two cents into it. I’ll just listen and let them vent. If friend B is also bitching about friend A, then I’d subtly ask them individually this question, “why are you still friends?”

Although it takes effort, being the good neutral friend is a good long term strategy I think. When one doesn’t lie, is fair and is discreet, then I think one would earn other people’s trust. And trust is a very good foundation to build a long lasting friendship on.