"Friendship”, the word that reminds me of graduation note books when I was younger. It’s been five years since the last time I touched one, as I was finishing high school. After coming I to study in England, the meaning of friendship has been altered.

In high school friendship to me was framed within the school’s fence, the classmates, the teachers, the janitors etc. Or some clothes shop assistants and the waitresses at my frequent ramen restaurant in Siam square a few meters from school. The world of an 18 year-old was unbelievably narrow.         
    
In London the term friendship needs a way broader interpretation. Besides the 4 physical needs; food, place to stay, clothing and medicine, mental health has been a factor which has turned me into viewing things more positively and being more broad-minded, naturally. Living by oneself in such a big city is truly a brand new start to anyone, anywhere.      
    
I met my first group of friends from the school’s dorm. A group of English art students I hung out and went clubbing with them three nights a week. Sometimes they’d do school work while enjoying themselves. For example, Vanessa who majored in Fashion Photography, would carry a camera anywhere she went. Another interesting character was Graham, a guy almost two meters tall who also worked as a musician. Graham was always wearing plain white t-shirt like those artsy fartsy you can easily see here in Thailand. He often got us free tickets for gigs or even got us some sort of privilege to shows with the help of some musicians’ he knew.

There were a few more people who’d hang out with us from time to time. Sometimes we’d eat or have some snack at Graham’s dorm room where I was introduced to two new friends, a Japanese and a Taiwanese.
    
A while after, Vanessa often went back home in Cambridge, helping her artist mother, arranging an exhibition. Graham enjoyed smoking and frequently not only tobacco.  And I was occupied with my pre-university English course for foreign students. So I started to hang out more with Asian friends from the course, this new group are Japanese and Korean who enjoyed similar activities as the first group. They often went shopping and visiting art galleries and exhibitions which really helped open up my eyes. The difference from the English friends was that whenever they drank or smoked or took drugs, they’d keep me away from it as the Asian way of treating younger friends when the English group would encourage me to join. And thank God I have lived in London for over two years without a drop of liqueur, a cigarette, a joint and any kinds of drugs!  
    
Soon after, I made new friends from the university, Singaporeans and Hong Kong. What we did mostly were cooking, going to art exhibitions and strolling along the city. At this point, it came to my interest that when I first got to London I took impressions on people from their nationalities and citizenships. But as time went by I started to see each person as the whole picture of who they were without a wall in the definition and/or the stereotype of their backgrounds and appearances.        
    
To me, friendship can be altered into an equation;

Friendship = sincerity + positive feeling +
    
Or without giving too much thought in defining it, friendship is merely a smile with a sincere expression of the eye. Friendship does no-one harm and if you would deny, that possibly means you have found yourself something else in disguise.