learning new things

What I love most about my life is the many different personalities that come in and out of my life. Not everyone hangs around for a long time and I've come to terms with that. I like friends who stick around for life but if someone is going to drop out of my life for a period, that's fine too. I just hope that I keep meeting new people who have vastly different life stories and/or personalities. The latter can be difficult sometimes but it does make life more fun.

Take this guy Col from my Sun night badminton group, for example. He's introduced a couple of us to another group that plays on Sat in Kowloon--quite far off and inconvenient but the level of play is higher--so we went out to dinner and then took buses there and back together so I got to learn more about him.

Col is exactly the kind of guy I grew up ... well, I kept my distance from people like him, to put it mildly. He smokes, goes clubbing, probably drinks heavily, and chases typical Asian beauties with big eyes, small faces, sharp chins, and soft voices. I'm only friends with Col now because we play badminton. I mean, I hate crowds, I don't really drink, and cigarette smoke makes me cough, so there's no way I'm going to go clubbing. (Actually now that I think about it, Col sounds a lot like my old xd partner, except that Arch's appreciation for feminine beauty fell on a wider spectrum and he was much less verbal about that appreciation.)

But what was interesting this past Saturday evening was watching Col charm everyone we met, including the (male) waiter at the kebab restaurant. Col has a beautiful fiancee in Japan (he showed me her pictures on his iphone) but he still checks out pretty girls on the street (I know because he points them out to me) and acts like a little rascal any chance he can get. He's a year older than I am but Col seems like such a kid. I am learning that he can be thoughtful about certain things, like how difficult it might be for his fiancee when she moves over to HK to marry him, or how to navigate his relationship with his dad since he's being trained to take over his dad's pharmaceutical business.

So, the old z would have been scandalized--and I do jokingly threaten to tell his fiancee about his roving eye--but it really is a whole lot of fun to hang out with him. I had to clarify though, that he should not pay for my dinner when we're out together. Okay, confession, it made me feel good that he offered and insisted so strongly but it wouldn't be right. I can see how nice it would be to hang out with guys who make it a habit to pay every time they're out with girls. But no, it wouldn't be fair so I will continue to hang on to my independence!!

I've noticed that I tend to be a lot more impatient with men especially if they seem irresponsible to me. I tend to either reply with sarcasm or just avoid hanging out with them. What I'm learning in this very new friendship is that--well, to some degree at least--I need to learn to trust these kinds of men a little more than I have in the past. Little boys do grow up after all and they don't grow up because some cranky b--yatch lashes out at them.

Still, I know that I am able to do it only because we're badminton friends, and Col's decisions have very little effect on my life. Oh well, baby steps!