Sex in the City-esque

It started with a brisk phone call to join up with some friends after being called OBESE (see post below). After long breaks in friendships, it's natural to try and rekindle those buddies that kept you feeling sane and safe during high school. We make the calls, we all seem to be in a relatively close proximity to one another (especially because I am no longer in the conservative south, San Diego.) Thus, starts the journey of three high school friends-Connie, Dinna, and James-only four years later.

After driving through Los Angeles where superficiality is a Way of Life, I wonder what has changed with my two friends and if they are still the same people I enjoyed four years ago. In the four years since we spent every day together, in a harsh reality of high school, we've entered real reality-post undergraduate lives, with only a handful of times of seeing each other. It always boggles my mind, can we move foward with our relationships or will we be having the same conversations we had four years ago, reminescing about our past, because we've made no memories of our current present.

We met up, we greeted each other as if, at most, four minutes has passed in our lives, not the long four years that has seperated us. We drive to the local cineplex catch our film, yet we don't have much to say to each other, we can only talk at each other-we tell stories.

We live our present by telling the personal stories of our past, as if if we share the story, we can somehow share the memory, hoping to fill those long gaps of time and our life. The movie ends, we spend a few minutes talking about our present, finally, something we've shared. Yet, can a film hold together a friendship? Is a film what friendships are made out of now? Spending time together is great, and if the film we chose was any indication, it was not quality time nor worth the 8 dollars (with student discount) that I paid.

We decided, internally amongst ourselves, 'we're together, we should spend our time actually together, in the company of one another.' What better a place to do that than at a restaurant, because if all else fails, I can enjoy the food and excuse my bad conversational skills by indicating my mouth was full and that an external force has barred me from speaking. I was able to blame my OBESEity (see angry post below) for the failure of our friendship.

Thus it came time to order our items. We settled on a Korean (Soon Tobu) Tofu House in K-Town, LA. I looked over their menus with pictures next to each of the items they were offering. We all decided what we wanted, was food the glue that held our friendship together? The elderly Korean waitress came up to us and we pressed forward with our orders. When it was my turn, I decided to go with a soup filled with the "intestine of cattle" or what I would like to call tripe and brisket they entitled GUT Soon Tobu. The waitress explained in Korean to my pals that they were not serving Gut Soon Tobu at the time. I had to quickly make another choice and I settled on the Beef & Seafood Combination.

When what we see isn't really there, what else are we missing? What else am I settling for?

This is the question of the night. Have we become so disillusioned in our lives, so caught up with ourselves we no longer check to make sure our friendships are still intact-we only expect them to be, because it's what we last left them. Am I content to have a friendship that's based on who we were four years ago? Am I ready to settle for something that looks like a friendship to the person sitting in a booth over, but in reality, isn't even being served?

Don't get me wrong. I deeply adore my two friends, and unless they were convicted for murder, I most certainly always will. However, has what I perceived to be friends actually slipped to being acquaintances without me even realizing it? I hope not.

But what surprised me is not that I questioned my friendship, but that my friendship was reconfirmed that hot, Californian night in K-Town. For when we actually left the restaurant, we were two hours into making a new present for ourselves, into making new memories we can laugh about when we meet again. When we stepped out of the entrance to the small joint, the waitress waived us down. We turned around, embarassed, beliving we did not leave enough money to cover our check. We were asian, this doesn't happen to us.

It turns out, the waitress was unhappy about the tip we left and guilt-tipped us into leaving an extra two dollars that we reservedly handed over. Two dollars we didn't want to hand over but did anyway in a desperate attempt to leave the restaurant and to talk about our newest memory with each other. It turns out, even though insecure with my friendship to these two beautiful people, in fear that we were living our past, unable to be friends in our future, our present was secured by a greedy old korean lady that wanted a larger tip.

We had something new to laugh about, a new memory to hold on to, and we were able to update our past-or at least give ourselves a couple more gallons of gas to get us through our next long hiatus. Our friendship will hold strong, I feel, because we not only see it on the menu, we can order it anytime we like.

And even though my Gut Soon Tobu never came, I wish my own Gut Soon Tobe gone (see very angry post below).