After we came back from San Francisco, it was about time to pick up Josephine, uncle Pan’s daughter. She was doing her practical training at a designing department. We planned to travel several national parks together.
Josephine and I met 14 years ago. She was seven and I was six, just graduated from kindergarten. In those days, I still didn’t know what internet and cell phone was, so there was no way to keep in touch with friends.
I vaguely remembered that Josephine was a sanguine and swarthy girl, but her appearance has faded from my memory. I was looking forward to see her. It was strange because I thought people who haven’t met each other would probably become strangers. After all, our lives were of widely divergent and partitioned off by distance and time.
The drive from Fremont to UC Davis was about three hours, and we met her in her dorm. I was so amazed to find that dorms in America were so different from those in Taiwan. The dorms were many two stories houses. Each dweller had a room of their own, and they shared rest of the public places, such as bathroom, kitchen, and living room. Roommates were just like families, they cooked and cleaned up together.
Josephine hasn’t changed much, still ardent and kind, so we acquainted with each other very soon. The familiarity made me feel like reviewing a subject that I have prepared for a long time, or a cow chewing the cud.
Sometimes friends are really close at a specific moment or during a time. but if friends stop contacting each other or go to different place for university, they can only contact each other through Facebook or other social platform on the internet. Then, friends become just "observing" each other's life like strangers.
ReplyDelete