Ham Tan.
Our feet were sore from all the day-time scurrying - sight after sight and mall after mall, we finally decide to head back to the hotel. But not before we got ourselves a big bottle of Tsing Tao and a can of Pringles from the 7-Eleven just across the street (from the hotel) where her family was staying at.
As she busied herself with packing - mostly shopping loot from the afternoon, I turned on the tap for the bath tub and filled it with hot water. Nothing beats a nice hot soak after all that torture we'd put our feet through. When she was finally done stuffing her luggage with the new clothes she'd bought, we settled our heavy bums comfortably on the edge of the ceramic tub, and plonked our tired feet into the warm water. What sweet relief.
We filled the tiny hotel tea cups with beer and we drank slowly from them, refilling the cups only when the liquid in them reached the bottom. Slowly, we poured our hearts out to each other as we emptied the beer from the bottle and cups.
We talked about many topics that night, and when we finally reached this particular one, Ham made us hook pinkies and made me promise not to tell anyone about it. I couldn't help but laugh out really loud when we even sealed the promise by pressing our thumbs together; I didn't laugh because I had any intentions of breaking my promise, but because this little act brought back so many fond memories from a childhood that's since been long lost and evoked a somewhat familiar and comforting feeling in me.
I am not at liberty here to disclose what our pinky promise was about; but I guess it's okay to talk about some of the other things that were mentioned in our late-night heart to heart talk - we talked about life's unpredictability, the wariness of keeping up with some friends and their changing lifestyles, the sense of satisfaction that one gets from striking things off his/her to-do lists, discussed generally about boys and men, our families and our fears of disappointing the ones who matter. Poor Ham must have been bored as hell when I even ventured into politics (very gingerly, of course).
We covered almost every topic imaginable under the sun. I felt very lucky at that instance; as I wriggled my toes in the soothing water and had my fingers wrapped around a tiny cup of cold beer, to have come across this person some point in my life; she is someone whom I can be totally honest with and not be afraid of receiving judgement from, someone who understands so much of what I'm thinking (or at least appear to), someone who lets me finish what I have to say before giving her insightful opinions and someone who really loves me for who I am.
I shed a tear when I talked about Mumsy at one point; but there were no qualms and no shame about crying that night, not in front of her anyway. "Let it all out, you'll feel better after" she said. And I did.
We don't have the good fortune of being able to meet up so frequently anymore since our graduation from TP, and I was pretty upset about it for awhile. Slowly though, after I got over my own selfishness, I came to realize that everytime when we do meet, each meeting usually serves to make what we have between us slightly stronger. It's wonderful.
Funny how things work out sometimes, don't you think?
