I have been giving some serious thought as to what I wanted my next blog to be about. I didn’t want this to take the route of a travel blog, as eventually my travelling days will shrivel up and die (sob!) and I would be left with nothing to write about (sob for me, yay for you?!) – so I thought this could be a “lifestyle” blog which essentially means I can talk about anything I want. It also aids in the idea that this is my dear diary in a very public forum.
If you’ve read any of my earlier stuff, you’ll be aware that I have now relocated 6,376 miles away from “homehome”, to sunny Singapore. Moving 13 hours across the globe obviously has its pluses (weather, location, food etc.) but there are also the harder more day to day things. No-one wants to hear my struggles in finding employment but you might be interested to learn a bit more about how complete strangers become your closest friends, and how some strangers… well, remain just that.
So probably the only thing that frightened me about moving was having to make new friends. I genuinely have not made new friends since I started my first job, five years ago. And not just work friends, I mean people who dealt with my mood swings, regularly became drunk and disorderly with me and kept me entertained at all times – true achievements. Therefore moving here without any of them was a huge step away from my comfort zone, and meant I needed to do my best to find replacements (soz old friends). When I say replacements I literally mean like for like, I mean why play with an already great recipe?
There are some great forums for expat women in Singapore (surprisingly specific to women, although I guess a beer and a ball can make any two men best friends), and a single post on one of these would get a million responses with people falling over themselves to help with questions, queries and anxieties. Generally I’m quite an outgoing person, however the idea of baring all to a group full of strangers terrified me, and it took me at least a week to build up the courage and put together the right words to share my first post. Thankfully I did as it got me several encouraging responses, and what you could call “instant friends”, in the cyber sense at least.
You can of course meet people the more traditional way (but what is that again?) on a night out, at a bar, maybe at an activity based meet up. But wherever you meet people the one consistent thing I found was everyone is oober nice here, like SO nice, I mean how often would you comment on a strangers post giving advice and relating to a personal experience (you wouldn’t, I mean I’m a Londoner, we can’t even look at each other on the tube, actual communication and deep feelings are most definitely in the red zone). Meeting people is actually relatively easy, just go for a drink with a total stranger (never mind that they could be an axe murderer or something), you’re the weird one if you don’t!
From my years of experience, friendships can more or less fall into three different categories, despite which country you live in, although possibly more evident in a new environment.
1) The Serial Friendship Dater (“the SFD”)
An SFD is an individual who is enthused to meet you, and instantly acts as one of your best friends on the surface, but (often without realising) uses you to meet more people. You meet them for a drink once, then the next time they suggest you bring a few more people, and you get the feeling that you being there isn’t as important as the people you bring there with you. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoy my different circle of friends merging, especially when they hit it off (not so much when they decide to replace me with each other during my international absence), but SFD’s whilst generally nice people appear more interested in quantity over quality, making it difficult to get to second base of friendship with them.
2) The “I have my Own Friends (IOF)” type
I hold my hands up and say this has been 100% the category I have fallen into until this point in my life. These are the people who already have established friendship circles and whilst are more than happy to speak to you, have no further interest in socialising with you outside of this scope. They can come across as intimidating particularly for fresh-faced newbies who run in exclaiming “frieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeend, be my friend”. Without realising it IOF’s put up a brick wall around them by discussing things specific to them and their group, be it memories or private jokes, and when you try to participate, the silence that meets you gives the awkward sense that they think you are trying to infiltrate their circle.
3) The “Invitor”
Invitors are those that meet you and start inviting you to different things. They tend to have their own circle of friends, but are more than happy to have you tag along, and often don’t register that you are new. They quickly become the people you spend a lot of time around (expat tip: say yes to everything you are invited to, at least initially), which massively accelerates your friendship from first base to fourth (you may have guessed I have zero clue, what this “base” system is…). Generally, if an Invitor likes you and you get on, you possess all the qualifications required to be part of their posse.
So... where is it that I fit in? I still classify myself as a newbie, with only two months under my Singaporean belt, plus I haven’t yet met anyone to take my spot. But whilst living in London I was leaning heavily towards being an IOF, due to which I have, on more than one occasion here, felt super lazy to go somewhere to have nonversation (the art of having a conversation which basically means nothing), and wished for the ability to leap frog the small talk and get straight into the fun stuff. But here I have been so far flung from my comfort zone, which I like to think has developed me as a person, and hopefully one day I will sit firmly in the Invitor squad.
The one thing I forgot at homehome, when I was sitting in a room full of people talking to the same three I always spoke to, was that finding genuine people is a hard ask, and sometimes they are sitting three foot away from you, and you just haven’t bothered noticing. Now (without being a soppy so and so) I feel grateful for the friends I have at home, as well as for those I’ve met here, who I can just call up for a glass of wine after a rough day and have the most ridiculous and entertaining conversations with.
I am also getting back into the swing of hurling abuse at people, rather than being overly nice all the time, which might sound horrible, but is definitely more my forte, and might actually explain why I haven’t made new friends in 5 years... For now I’m still enjoying the situations where an occasional drink planned weeks in advance is turning in to “fancy coming over tonight to watch Game of Thrones in total silence” - a whole new meaning to Netflix and chill.
