version3.0

Since arriving in Auckland I have racked up a total of 12 flatmates including:

• 1 vegan
• 2 Irish people
• 1 homosexual
• 2 Americans
• 1 thief
• 10 girls
• 2 boys
• 1 practicing Christian
• 1 Indian
• 1 sociologist
• 1 person who I went to high school with
• 11 people I had never met before in my life
• Too many Friends fans
• Not enough drum and bass fans

What is more amazing than anything that they do, or where they are from, their religion, sexual persuasion, or taste in music is that I now count almost all of them (just a couple of notable exceptions) among my friends, some of them among my best friends.

How is it that in general day to day life I seem to rarely meet people that I want to spend more than 5 minutes with but in the past three years eleven random, diverse people have almost all become my friends?

Of course the reason I have been thinking about this is that this week another flatmate is being added to the growing list of those who have left for far off lands. One that has become one of my closest friends. Another trip to the Auckland International Airport. Another good-bye dinner. Another round of big hugs, teary eyes, and somber drives back home.

So, bon voyage Tui. I know that we will always be great friends.

I am currently hemorrhaging friends. Since arriving in Auckland I seem to have done nothing but lose friends. I assume that somewhere along the way I must have made these friends, but the making of friends seems to be a somewhat distant memory now. If I continue to lose friends at this rate, I will soon slip into the territory of having minus friends, which I can only assume are enemies.

Thankfully (well, hopefully) this oozing of friends is more to do with the lure of exotic foreign locations than the overwhelming desire to get as far from me as possible.

The latest to join the exodus is Redbeast. The details of the farewell weekend are hazy, but the memories of her time here are anything but.

Without her and Slydawn around I am likely to unleash my loosely cobbled together opinions on the general public at random. I feel sorry for the unsuspecting person who is coerced into an argument about the relative popularity of windsurfing in Mozambique.

So, there are now several vacancies in the friends department. A desire to engage in vigorous discussion about anything would be considered an advantage. Expressions of interest may be made in the comments field below in the first instance.