Anyway, back to the present, just about a few weeks before we met, I think in the first few days of Ramadan, AY just contacted me out of the blue on FB ... She has been on my FB list for the longest time, but for some reason, I never felt compelled to say hi to her ... And she me ... I think we had short chat a long time ago, but that was about it ... Now and then, I see her updates on my FB's newsfeeds ... See pictures of her grown daughter ... I thought I should say something ... "Hey, your daughter is all grown up" or something like that, but I never did ...
So, when AY just greeted me on FB Messenger out of the blue like that, I was, to put it mildly, taken aback ... And then she asked for a favour ... I will not divulge what that favour is due to the sensitivity of the favour itself, but I felt miffed ... I thought, "What? We haven't talked for the longest time and you're asking for a favour from me?" ... I kept it cool, though ...Just gave her terse answers, and you already know by now that's rather uncharacteristic of me since I can be long-winded in my blog posts ... As it turned out, she was returning to Malaysia and she wanted to meet up with me ... I half-heartedly agreed ... I even told her she could stay over at my place on the night her flight arrived and offered to pick her up from the airport ...
Up to today, I'm not actually sure why I said those things ... I don't owe AY anything, nor she I, but those words just slipped out of my fingers and onto the keyboard as we messaged each other ... I guess at the back of my mind I was thinking of the memories the four of us, AY, T, A and I, shared together, and AY was a really good friend when we were in college ... When I ended up in Bognor Regis and AY ended up in Edinburgh, I traveled all the way north by train to visit her and during my stay, she took me to Edinburgh Castle and Arthur's Seat, among others ... We also traveled by bus to see Loch Ness ... I had never thought the lake would be that large ... Nope, didn't see the Loch Ness monster ... There's a photo of me, AY and her housemates at the place they rented in Edinburgh and we both looked happy in it ... I don't know, maybe it's all these things that just compelled me to invite her to stay over at my place ... But, in the end, that arrangement was not to be ... AY had to take another flight to her hometown the next day after she arrived, and she was supposed to meet two other college buddies that very morning ... I did not want to meet any of my college mates due to my own insecurities ... Them with their careers and their families and me with my suck-ass job and still being single ... So, like two weeks prior to our meeting, both AY and I agreed to meet at KLIA2 around 6pm since her flight was at 9pm ...
Okay, KLIA2, or KLIA for that matter, is really out of the way for me ... To get there is an hour's drive ... I was thinking of the expensive parking at KLIA (since I wasn't sure how to get to KLIA2) and the money I had to spend at all the tolls from my place all the way to KLIA ... So I thought I would just take public transport ... I would park my car at the nearest LRT station to my place (which I think some of you who follow my blogs would know if you've been reading my blogs like some crazy weirdos that you are), and take the LRT to KL Sentral, where I would take the Express Rail Link to KLIA2 ... So, when I walked up to the counter and said "Return for KLIA2" and they said, "That would be RM100", that literally knocked the wind out of me ... I walked away from the counter in a daze and then worked it out furiously in my head as to how I was going to go to KLIA2 to meet up an old friend who pretty much isn't a friend anymore ... Frankly, I was furious ... Two days before the Eid, my car just had to break down, and I spent almost RM500 getting it fixed, partly because the towing was expensive ... The thought even crossed in my head that I would travel back to get my car and just drive to KLIA instead of having to fork out 100 f**king ringgit just to meet somebody I wasn't really friends with anymore ... But, time was of the essence, and I don't like to be late to any meeting ... In the end, I very reluctantly withdrew RM100 from the ATM, bought the return ticket and sat in the train feeling really mad ... I was so mad that I didn't even bother reading the novel I had brought with me to pass the time ... But, I cooled myself down by reciting the Istighfar many times ... Eventually I cooled down, and by that time, the ERL was more than halfway to KLIA2 ... I didn't realize how fast the train was, and again, maybe it was Providence, but it was a good thing after all that I took the ERL instead of driving all the way to the airport because I was pretty tired when I arrived at my place later that night at 10 something ...
We had agreed to meet at Starbucks ... So, I found the Starbucks and although I didn't want to spend any more money than I already had, I didn't think they would take it kindly that I would just sit there to wait for somebody and read my novel without paying anything, so I bought a drink ... AY had half joked that there might be more than one Starbucks at the airport prior to our meeting, and she was right ... As a result, she was a bit late, but luckily she bought a local SIM card, so she called me to find out where I was and I repeatedly told her I was at Starbucks, thinking at the time that there was only one Starbucks there ... Then, she said about the other Starbucks and I told her to ask the info counter where the Starbucks I was at ...
Anyway, when we met, I thought AY looked pretty much they way she did 20 years ago ... Of course, her glasses are gone ... And she sounded so American ... We started to talk, and that's when I realized that AY was, and to a certain degree, still is a good friend ... We talked about our families, our jobs, etcetera etcetera ... She told what she has been doing since her migration to the States in 1999, I told her about my psychotic episodes ...Unlike A and N, who only half listened when I started telling them about my mental condition, AY listened intently to what I was saying ... At one point, I thought her eyes would just glazed over and her mind would be elsewhere when I was talking about my problems while I was trying to do my post-graduate degree in Japan, but no, she kept on listening ... I asked her whether she knew what schizophrenia was, and she nodded (partly due to the fact that her current job involves healthcare coding), and at the end of my story, she asked whether I was seeking out support groups like what most people do in the US when they have a deep-seated issue, like substance abuse or things like that ...
There and then, I realized I misjudged AY ... She really did want to meet up with me ... And that favour? Well, she had asked me to call up a place which I will not name because, like I said, it was a personal and sensitive matter, and that was it ... We started talking about the stuff we did back in college, and she reminded me that I had given her a book on Snoopy ... For the love of God, I cannot remember at all giving AY a book of any sort, but apparently I had ... She has shown it to her children and had written something like, "This is a book given to me by J blah blah blah" in that book ... She still even has kept The Confused Grammarians t-shirt we made, which was my idea ... I also still have mine ...
We talked and talked for about two hours ... AY had suggested while we were messaging on FB that we would talk over dinner, but instead we just talked ... Although the conversation mainly focused on an issue to do with AY's brother, which was why she came back, she cared enough to listen to my woes as well ... At the end of our conversation, she gave me a Snoopy pouch with a lip gloss inside it ... I never thought of getting her any gift ... When she complimented on how great I looked, I feebly replied by saying that she still had her figure after two children and that I was so jealous ... Stupid me, gnawed by my own stupid insecurities, said that ...
In the train on my way home, I looked at the pouch and at the L'Oreal lip gloss, and it struck me what a stupid friend I was ... Stupid because I didn't care enough to buy a gift, and even stupider to think that AY just wanted a favour out of me and that was all ... Until this moment as I'm typing this, I never thought of asking AY why she had wanted to meet me ... But, that would have been the stupidest question I could have ever asked if I did ... Why wouldn't an old friend want to meet up with the friend she had shared so many good things with, even though those things took place a long time ago? ... As I have lost a few good friends, maybe, just maybe, God wants to remind me that I still have a few more, even though they are in other countries, one halfway across the globe and another just Down Under ...
As AY and I parted ways, I told her to at least just say hi on FB once in a while ... I don't expect to have frequent conversations with her ... I don't have frequent conversations with my friend in Brisbane either ... But, when FB reminds me that his birthday is on a particular day, I would almost always say Happy Birthday to him ... There is no FB reminder of AY's birthday, maybe because like me, she chose to keep that information private, but you know what, her birthday happens to be just three or four days before mine, if I'm not mistaken ... I remember this because AY, A and I exchanged gifts during Matriculation since our birthdays are very close to each others' ... I may not have given AY a physical gift, but when her birthday comes up next year, I may come up with a funny GIF or movie meme with my signature Brainjuice wacky lines as a present for her ... It's the very least I could do for an old friend who cared enough to meet me and remind me that I have had better days in the last 20 years ...
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