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?