Friendship | It’s as simple as putting the biscuit in the basket

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July

Dear July 23rd MMIX,

How are you? Yes, I am being polite; I did share and enjoy your company today to know how you are.

I wanted to write this letter of appreciation to you – to thank you for the amazing moments which I experienced with you today; It’s been a while since I wrote a letter, so forgive me if I address you informally.

Today I saw something which I haven’t seen in a while… I saw smiles and tears over events small, yet monumental.

On Wednesday night, I stumbled upon the video of Jill and Kevin’s big day. My first reaction was to be struck in awe of what I saw. I HAD to share it with my friends, and their reaction of smiles and tears that evening was exactly I had expected from them.

When I shared the video with those around me at work today, I got the same reaction from a lot of them – tears and smiles. Let me tell you why the video touched me, affected me so immensely, far greater than I would expect it to.

First of all the setting – the simplicity of the church was beautiful. The music kicks in and the beauty of the whole event begins. Greater than the wedding ceremony, the music, the dances, greater than all of them was the beauty of friendship which is evident in the video. The strength of friendship between the bride and groom and their buddies is enviable. It takes a lot to participate and make an occasion so memorable, but the enthusiasm of everyone was so infectious. Sure, there were no MJs out there, but the uniqueness of each person and their contribution was touching, and made the ceremony… or atleast the entrance, very very memorable.

Jill and Kevin, you guys and you’re friends are pure awesomeness! Thank you so much for bringing that moment of happiness in our lives. We all hope and pray for you both to have an amazing life ahead of you!

23rd July, With every moment of happiness that you brought me today, you showed me a moment to feel low too. When one of my closest colleagues came and began idling around me…. I knew something was not right… after some coaxing, he opened up and shocked me that he was made redundant. 23rd July, you got the surprise which you didn’t see coming. The tear which left my eye was of pain. A friend is a friend, and you feel pain and hurt when they ‘break’ away from you, but when a motivator moves away – the pain is different; dull, full of shock, and harsh.

As high as the morning could get, the afternoon couldn’t get any lower. It really couldn’t.

As I rode the bumps and jolts on the train home, my mind drifted to one thing – the words of my new adopted soundtrack to life. As I listened to it on loop, as I had done at every opportunity at work, I thought back to the moments in the day. Happiness, sadness, disappointment, excitement, elation, deflation, appreciation – I felt all these. I saw the magic of friends somewhere far away, and I felt their effects in those around me. In disappointments and elation, I saw the magic of friendship, and felt a step closer to each one with whom I shared today.

In every moment today, I experienced an emotion…. it was either tear or smile.

Such is life.

With all my love, thanks and greatest of appreciation…..

Cookie Monster

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Category: Me, Posts, Social network, Work, music Tags: Arts, Blog, blogging, Business, family, Friendship, Google, google reader, Happiness, Health, Holiday, Home, London, Marriage, Me, middle east, On the Web, Online Communities, People, Poetry Quotations and Literature, Psychology, Recreation, Relationships, Searching, Social network, Social Sciences, Society and Culture, Twitter, UK, United Kingdom, United States, Weblogs, wedding, weekend, women, Work 8 Comments

The difference between strangers and friends…

July

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Another fantastic post from Seth Godin which I wanted to share with you guys [original post here]; I think the philosophy of friendship is very simple, and it is complicated by our wants and perceptions.

Strangers are justifiably suspicious.

Friends give you the benefit of the doubt.

“Friend” is more broadly defined as someone you have a beer with or meet up with to go on a hike. A friend is someone who has interacted with you, or who knows your parents or reads your blog—someone with history. If you’ve made a promise to someone and then kept it, you’re a friend. If you’ve changed someone for the better, you’re a friend as well.

We market to friends very differently than we market to strangers. We do business differently as well.

Thanks to social networks and the amplification of stories online, we have far more friends per person than at any other time in human history. Nurturing your friends—protecting them and watching out for them—is an obligation, and it builds an asset at the same time.

(I want to distinguish friends from ‘friendlies’, the people you have a digital link to, but no real connection. Friendlies are basically strangers with a thumbnail of their face on your screen. They’re not friends. And, while we’re at it, the moment you treat a friend like a stranger (form mail, for example) they’re not a friend any more, are they?)

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Category: Me, Posts, Social network Tags: Arts, Beer, Blog, blogging, Business, Education, family, Friendship, Google, google reader, history, Home, Human, Kids and Teens, London, Me, On the Web, Online Communities, People, Psychology, Recreation, Relationships, Searching, seth godin, Social network, Social Sciences, Society and Culture, Thumbnail, UK, United Kingdom, United States, Weblogs, weekend, women, Work 8 Comments

What do you do?

July

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If you missed it, I was guest posting over at HanniePants’ blog a couple of days ago; do check out and comment on the post there!

What do you do when you want to help a good friend…. but they maybe don’t see what you are trying to do. Maybe they do know that you want to lend them that set of ears, but they just need that little bit of space to think things through. This is where a friendship become challenging.

How well do you know your friend to find you and trust you in their moment of need?

A huge part of this comes down to the strength of trust between your friend and yourself. You may have the best of friendships with somebody, have all the trust in the world in that person, but the strength of that trust may be fragile. It may well be that the “issue” which is bothering your friend may be unrelated to you. It could be that you or nobody is the best person to give an opinion.

[source]

Whatever it is, one hopes and prays that at the end of it all, your friend gets back to their fighting best knowing well that they were always in your thoughts, and you were always that one step away from them if they looked your way.

Thanks for hosting me H, you certainly DO rock, and hope to see you in action soon!!

I have been the Cookie Monster, and I have kept is short for a change! You can find my crumbs on It’s as simple as putting the biscuit in the basket.

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Category: Me, Posts Tags: Blog, blogging, Cookie Monster, family, Friendship, Google, google reader, Home, London, Me, On the Web, Online Communities, Organizations, People, Psychology, Recreation, Relationships, Rock music, Sesame Street, Social network, Social Sciences, Society and Culture, Twitter, UK, United Kingdom, United States, Weblogs, weekend, women, wordpress, Work Leave a Comment

…and this one time, I made a connection…

June

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… yes I really did!

This memory came flooding back last night, after my ex sent me a message on MSN that our mutual friend (lets call her E) gave birth to baby girl last week.

E (bless her) is one of the most unique people I have met. By unique I definitely one in 6 billion – there can only be one of her; She is so crazy that we nicknamed her ‘Deli Deli’ – which is Turkish for crazy crazy. I first met E in 2006; she is the best friend of my Ex. I landed in Turkey on a crazy hot friday evening, looking forward to my holiday and more than that – an adventure. We met up with E in downtown Izmir and headed towards my accommodation for the weekend. Within the first few moments, I knew I was going to strike a connection with this individual – her insanity was just on a level equal to none other. What is amazing of this jock-esque gal is that her characteristics and behaviours were on completely different planets – the first impression which anyone will get off her will be that she is simply unique!

E was going to backpack with us along the west and south of Turkey, however one problem that I faced ahead of me was that E spoke zero english…. and I spoke pretty much nada Turkish. As with all things “me” – this was going to be fun and interesting – this was going to be part of the adventure! I carried around a small notebook with me in an effort to make notes on the experiences which I was going to face ahead of me. We traveled for 3 weeks, in groups of upto 6 people, and I was looking to enjoy myself, see a completely different culture and pick up experiences along the way.

During one particular leg of our travels, we found ourself in Antalya – a southern city which at the peak of summer is the hottest place in Turkey. We were staking out here for 3-4 days, and found ourself some accomodation in a student hotel (i.e. the workers were all students learning their trade in the hospitality industry). One morning, which followed on from an exhausting day trip in the mad heat, I found myself in the restaurant grabbing breakfast with E. Now, we got along really well all trip, and there was always friendly banter and cross language communication was always done by those around us; however, as we grabbed a table by the window overlooking the sea, I really thought that it was going to be a dead quiet breakfast…. maybe i’ll just watch the waves roll in….

BOY was I wrong!

We spent the next hour and fifteen minutes (the staff had to ask us to leave because it was past breakfast time) slamming ideas on where to go next, what our plans were in life, what was it that I was expecting from my ex and my plan to woo over her family, and convince them for her hand.

We had those conversations across the language barrier!

I think it was her willingness to make me understand what she was trying to say, and me trying to listen and understand the words of an older sister (she is a little older than me), that helped us cross the language disparity. How do I know that we understood each other? When my ex asked me a few days later of what I thought E had talked to me about, she was surprised about every dotted i and crossed every t in my feedback.

I guess it goes to show that if there is a willingness to share something with someone, even language is no barrier!

One thing which we all agreed on as friends is that the last person to get married out of all of us would be E – that’s the type of person she is. Her fascination with the singer Serdar Ortac was hilarious, and my constant gay jokes against him absolutely irritated her; but life is a funny game, and the unexpected nature of it pleasantly surprises us from time to time.

E was the first out of all of us friends to get married, and last week she has a bouncing baby girl. Thank you baldiz* E for the awesome awesome awesome memory and company, they will be cherished forever!

*baldiz = sister – in -law ; that was another nickname for her

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Category: Me, Posts, Travel Tags: Antalya, Blog, blogging, England, family, friends, Friendship, Google, google reader, Health, history, Home, islam, Izmir, Kids and Teens, Language barrier, London, Me, middle east, On the Web, Online Communities, People, Psychology, Recreation, Relationships, Searching, Social network, Social Sciences, Society and Culture, Summer, Travel, Travelogues, Turkey, UK, United Kingdom, United States, Weblogs, weekend, women, wordpress 6 Comments

Week of events….

June

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No time to ponder about all of these… Some require a bit of contemplation… the others need to be noticed, smiled, and put archives…. but I thought I should share these with you guys too!

Began work on a unique 5 day long project for which my company will earn $20,000. The developer and I who worked on it, will not see a penny of it.
We received an email from the CEO saying that credit crunch blah blah – pay rises and bonuses are frozen for the near future.
Made an amazingly awesome friendship with someone at the start of the week.
Had an emo moment, and almost jeopardised that friendship by the middle of the week – my bad (and i’ll regret that one day! ). More importantly – my friend UNDERSTANDS!
Got pulled in as a project lead to a HUUUUUGE project – heading to Zurich on Sunday, to begin the processes.
Had a big grin on my face when I got a call from a cricket team mate who I gave some advice to a while back. The guy got a 2:1 in his degree. So awesome when people work hard, and get things going for themselves! Hope this guy gets far ahead in life!
Teaching noobies about our software in a couple of weeks’ time. I love teaching noobies – always fun times.
Going to play squash on Saturday after 5 months. I miss my 4 hour squash sessions at uni – I was hooked on to squash as if it was a substance to abuse.
Finally, I did this on Friday night….

The next two weeks are going to be very work heavy, so I’ll try to blog when I can. I am in 2 minds whether to travel with my camera or not (I am not a light traveler at the best of times, & my camera has a large chassis). If you guys are on twitter, then you know where to find me, and if I am not following you already then DM me, and i’ll make sure I do too!I am also trying to expand my LinkedIn network, so if you guys want to connect, then just drop me a link to your profile, or name via the contacts form, and I shall add you guys to my network.

I will defo be tweeting from Zurich (in the evenings)!

Catch you guys soon!

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Category: Me, Movie, Posts, Sport, Travel, Work, food Tags: Arts, Blah, Blog, blogging, Business, credit crunch, Deutsche Mark, Dubai, England, family, Friendship, Google, google reader, LinkedIn, London, Me, middle east, On the Web, Online Communities, People, Psychology, Recreation, Relationships, Social network, Social Networking, Social Sciences, Society and Culture, Sport, Twitter, UK, United Kingdom, United States, Weblogs, weekend, women, wordpress, Work 3 Comments

Friendship…..

February

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It’s been a pretty rough week… one of those where you take a step back and think to yourself – “wow! didn’t see that one coming!”. All week, I was up by 5am, so that I was out of the door, and at work by 730 am. I think its fair to say that physically it was very draining too.

On Tuesday night, as I headed to bed, I decided to restart my blackberry because it seemed a little slow. As I lay in bed, my face turned the same colour as the screen on the BB…. it was displaying the white screen of death. My attempts to revive it were futile, and it meant one and one thing only – I had to reinstall it (darn! important numbers were lost!). So as I hooked the BB to my PC, and got online to find the drivers, I got talking to my buddy HFM. Our conversation was hovering around a situation which she was having with a friend of hers. As we discussed further and further, my mind drifted back to something which I had put together a long while back, but never actually posted.

I was going through a phase not too long ago, when I was questioning everything associated with me. A huge question which I kept asking myself was “Who is a friend? What is a friend?” I keep thinking about this, and as HFM and I spoke more and more this week, it started to get a little clearer.

I am generally a very private person. Sure, I throw stuff around this blog, and I tweet as if its the unpolluted air that I desire, but it’s not even close to what my thoughts are. So, who do I share these thoughts with? Friends right? Well, that’s what I thought too… but I don’t know…. You see, my definition of a friend is someone who I can trust with my life. Someone who is there for me without me having to look for them. A friend is one who doesn’t care about the pleases and sorrys and thanks, because the connection between 2 friends is greater than that. But is that really friendship? I ask that because that is what YOU expect from another person… but would you give back the same too? And if you didn’t – does that make you less of a friend? Does it make you an associate and not a friend at all?

I love to keep things simple in life. Life is a battle on a daily basis, some of which you win, and some which you lose. What you don’t want though is battles with or amongst your friends. I think of friends as those who I can be there for, and those who are their for me; it doesn’t have to be in the worst circumstance, it’s just assuring to know that they are there!

On Tuesday night, HFM and MaliZOMG hung around and kept company which, to a large extent, made me feel sooooo much better; after a hard/bad day at work, nightmare day dealing with clients, trying to get stupid colleagues to do their job, and then finally as I was close to drifting off, a phone which needed resuscitation it was nice to know that 2 people just gave a crap. I slept for 4 hours that night, but I slept in the knowledge that I had 2 good friends who were there for me when I didn’t quite call out to either of them.

The same goes to everyone who comments or tweets or helps me or encourages me when I need it the most, but don’t quite talk about it – that is friendship; the pure fact that I know there are people who care enough to well… care! On my part – I have been less of a friend to a lot of people for a long time…. hopefully that change has begun, and will continue in the future.

One thing which I love about the Internet is the fact that you can make good, reliable, and great friends without ever meeting them in person. Given the opportunity, I would love to meet every one of them – from Salta in Argentina to Melbourne in Australia, St Petersburg in Russia to Chengdu in China. I love the friends which I have made in all walks of life – school, uni, work, chatting online, tweeting, blogging and ofcourse – travelling!

Friendship begins by offering what YOU have to give, and not what someone else is willing to give to you; so with that in mind – do you have what it takes to be a good friend?