surreal

when a friend MSN-ed me to tell me how little she did for the day, I felt honestly that I did nothing too.. until when I decided to write an entry in today then everything fell nicely in sequence to illustrate how long the day actually was.

Prior to this, I must mention that it was refreshing to chat with a good friend again. We met right after Trusts Lecture, sat at Costa and chatted for a good 2 hours before moving to the Arts Centre to chat for about 30mins or so and moved onto Social Sciences Cafe as she felt that she needed to move about.

It had previously daunted upon me that I did not really know many people and leaving the bungalow meant that I was unable to maintain a strong friendship with Emm. This prompted me to join my societies this year to know more people and to hopefully get closer friends.

Ann is a really great friend and was able to devote her whole afternoon to me, listening to my concerns, my whims and whatsnot. It was certainly assuring to get a "Call me anytime when you are feeling low" from her, a certain something I had often wished my parents would have done for me.

Met a girl from Norway at a social yesterday and it was rather unimaginable. She walked up to me and started introducing herself. To our disappointment, the language we both wanted was Russian but we were unable to do it per se as I am a master of a half substandard level of it (and terribly failure at the oral bit of which) and she is totally new to it. Nonetheless it was amazing the conversation lasted for 3 hours and we moved onto another party after discovering we were the only ones left at the social.

What she mentioned en route to her halls struck me.

"Do you wanna work or live in the UK like your sis?"
"Yeah.. I am not too sure about that yet. At the moment I would like to be..."
"Would your mom and dad say anything about it?"
"Who bothers about what they think?"
"You don't care?"
"It's not that I don't care but it is just that it's my life, my choice and they should not have a say in it. But at the moment I would love to be working near home 'coz I love the mountains and all."
"You do not care about their opinion for real?"
"It's not that.. but rather that they have never seen interested in any point of my life. I said I was coming to the UK to study and they were simply like "Oh ok" and that's it."
"So you wished that they would be more concerned?"
"I wish they would take a more participative role in my life"

This is from my sketchy memory of the exact words exchanged last night and it appeared to be rather meaningful to me. It showed me that it was not merely an Asian mindset that longed for this care from parents. My assumptions of the British or European culture in that kids and parents are generally not bothered with one another upon attaining the age of majority, along with the many cobwebs or blurred opinions of how people are like is constantly being challenged and defeated everyday. But it reminded me nostalgically and sadly that I too was the victim of such and often although we chatted, discussed and such at home, everything seemed one sided and they never did listen.