How would you react when you are told an old friend and his wife may go their separate way soon? And his wife is also an old friend of yours. And they have a kid. It caught me by surprise, a rather nasty surprise, when a friend broke this news to me, while we were on our way in a cab to a guys night out on Friday (that friend paid for the cab fares as he knows that I'm watching my expense as I'm out-of-work right now. So if you ever read this -- Thanks, I buy you some nice beers after I'm get a job again).
We had dinner at the Jumbo in Clarke Quay, there were eight of us, a nice number to make up a table. We were our usual selves, that is to say, we were bantering, joking and poking fun at each other pretty soon after we sat down. (When was our last get-together..? Mmm.. I remembered that was when I still got a job, which means could have been more than 4 months ago..)
Occasionally, we would swap news about the on-goings of our lives. But it usually must be a big piece of news before we would share about it. Like I learned that two of their wives have stopped working. One was sick of her job, and another was sick of her boss (who apparently was piling her with lots of work even though she is heavily pregnant now). But I did not bring up the subject about the separation, because I do not know how many of them knew about this. And even if everyone knows, its still a difficult subject to bring up.
There is something which keeps bugging me about these kind of get-together. When a big bunch of people get-together, it difficult to talk about sensitive subjects. And when its a big bunch of guys who have known each other since school days, I find we tend to revert back to our "former" selves back those days. Maybe its comforting, but it does leave me with a tinge of regret as it seems to me we lost an opportunity to deepen our friendship.
When you want to get a guy to open his heart to his friends, its best to be in small group of maybe 3 or 4, and the results will be better after a couple of mugs of fermented malt, hops and yeast (sometimes, a coffee outing between two will do).
Most of the Saturday, I was feeling quite down. Maybe its the after effects of the beers at Jumbo and the margarita at Long Bar. Maybe its also the after effects of the news about the separation. It makes me feel old. 这让我想起 梁文富 的一首歌， 一首讲述着朋友多年后相见的感觉 。。 我想不起那首歌的名字， 其实它的歌词我也已经莫湖不请了。。 你知道那首歌的名字吗。。。？
