hello, see you later

i'm on the plane flying back to taipei. it is 5:20am vancouver time. i'd been sleeping for the last hour and half, which is consistent with my vancouver sleeping schedule. i've been drifting in and out of consciousness, with the same songs in my ears as the ones i listened to when i flew this exact route last august. that time i'd carried with me loneliness, emptiness and much nostalgia. right now i feel instead glints of optimism, and solidity.

my thoughts have wandered from place to place since take-off, but mostly they are about the people i have just left, people i already miss. it really kicked into my system last saturday after my birthday party, how important these people have become. in the tiny kitchen sitting around two tables in earth-saving darkness were some of my oldest friends who i grew up with, newer friends i've connected with, people who have seen me through different times, people who i've only started to love. it was a room full of genuineness, so simple and true, sweet, from the heart. bb said i was a lucky girl to have had such a party. i was.

it has also become a party that's difficult to say goodbye to. my attempts to bid farewell mostly failed because my somewhat frowned-upon gut feelings are telling me that i will be back soon. my life with these people has settled into a simplicity that i had once considered mundane, a stability that i'd deemed boring. bb says that my priorities in life seem to have changed in the last 1.5 years, and i think that perhaps has hit the nail on the head.

this afternoon i had coffee with 3 of the boys. not the usual 3, i told bb, but the OTHER 3. the conversation was, unsurprisingly, filled with discussions of the new video game, the poker tournament at the casino, and hockey whenever a possible reference can be made:

M: i had lunch at the bacchus
D: where??
S: bacchus, it's nice, in the wedgewood hotel
D: where??
M: on hornby close to robson
D: uh..
S: you know where mac is?
D: yeah!
S: it's there
M: i think bacchus is the roman god of wine, no?
D: oh! i thought like the hockey player! (conversation thus steered towards hockey)

and, almost as if i wasn't there, at least not in the capacity as a girl, there were also blatant checking out and discussion of merits of hot chicks passing by, recounting of bangkok jokes from high school, and other in appropriate workplace advice containing sexual connotations. i laughed and thoroughly enjoyed myself. what had started as unbearable conversation content 4 months ago have now become familiar and endearing chatter that i am going to miss. how times have changed. how i have changed.

it is very hard to part with, a simple and genuine company of friends, symbolizing a lifestyle i now long for. but i know deep down that they've made a grand re-entrance into my life, and are there to stay forever. life and destiny have brought me back to them, and them to me. after coffee V and i parted on a street corner with a hug, and as he walked away he said a brisk "see you later." i think indeed.