A Good Day

I had a a good day!

With the stress I've been feeling over the last few weeks, today was a breath of fresh air.

My closest friend, W, and I hung out at one of our favourite haunts - Funan The IT Mall - just like the old days. We had a couple of "much needed" things to get, so we "justified" the trip and the expenditure.

W and I met when we were doing our National Service in a high security facility. I was placed in charge of him when he was just a recruit and truthfully, I didn't like him. He looked like a young punk out to stir trouble. I actually protested (in front of W) to my Officer-In-Charge and asked to assign him to someone else. But as the old adage proclaims - do not judge a book by its cover. W turned out to be quite a likeable character. On top of his cheerful personality, he was brilliant! When he graduated from vocational studies prior to enlisting, he finished in the top 10% of all vocational students in Singapore. That's impressive, by my standards!

While others generally complain about their compulsary two and a half year National Service stint, W and I had a fantastic time there! We went through a great deal together and were usually at the centre of many very interesting "events" and "controversies". Many of these are "classified" and so I can't share them openly. But we always have a good chuckle when we talk about them.

After our NS stint, I went on to pursue Electronics and Computer Engineering and a year later, W joined me at the same institution to pursue Mechanical and Electrical Engineering. After graduating, I joined the company I am still working for (its been 13 years) and W joined me in the same department 6 months later. He's still here as well but is now attached to a different area of work in a different centre.

One of our favourite past times over the weekend, back when we were both single and very available, was to meet up, catch a movie, grab some dinner and then chill out with a cup or two of Spinelli's ice blended coffee lamenting about girlfriends, broken relationships and whether we'd ever settle down. We both had rough relationships in the past so we feel very blessed to have found wonderful life partners. Our wives are now good friends too! And... our sons were born just three weeks apart with my little boy leading the duo.

Work and family commitments resulted in us placing huge voids, sometimes up to a year, between our "guys hang-out" session. But when we do meet up, like today, it was as though we last met a few days ago. We shared jokes from the good ol' days, argued about politics and work issues and dared each other to make huge IT purchases with "I'll buy if you buy". We'd usually chicken out after the whole hoo-ha. Today's dare? A S$3000 laptop!

So what did we actually dare buy? We got a 500GB hard disk for me, a box of mini DV tapes each, a DVD burner drive for W and a spool of 100 blank DVDs which we split equally.

Although I feel guilty about not spending time with my little boy today, I really think I needed this "break".

Thanks W, I had a great time!