What A Tangled Web We Weave

... when we first began making friends.

:::

When I was in polytechnic, I found myself walking across the overhead bridge to school one morning with three girl friends. All of us took the same bus to school.

As the four of us made our way to school, I'd marveled how, at that very moment, the different parts of nearly my entire life were represented by the three of them. There were Alvina, from my primary school days; Jen, from my secondary school days; and Andrea, who was then my polytechnic classmate.

But, more than that, the three of them were, in one way or another, 'connected' to one another. Alvina and Andrea and I are from the same primary school, and Alvina and Andrea had not only gone to the same secondary school, they had also both belonged to the Girls' Brigade; Jen and I spent two years in the same class in secondary school; and now, in polytechnic, she and Alvina were studying in the School of Business, while Andrea and I went to the School of Design.

That very morning, I had been amazed. But when I find more and more connections zig-zagging between the people from my past and present, it's ... I don't have a huge vocabulary, so I'm gonna go with freaky. I'm no longer amazed at how people are connected to one another; I'm bloody freaked out by it.

To wit:

• During my secondary school days, my friend and ex-classmate, Gary, came to me with a girl-problem: he liked this girl from another school but didn't know how to go about 'getting to know' her. He told me the girl's name and school, and I'd stared at him and said, "Petrina Tan ... RGS? Uh, wavy hair, glasses ... and her Chinese name is Wen Ya?"
  
  He was astonished. "Yeah. How do you know?"
  
  "We were in the same class in primary three, five, and six."



• Some time during my polytechnic days, I met up with Roger, a friend from secondary school. In the course of our chat, he mentioned his best friend, Junior (also from the same secondary school, and with whom I was acquainted) was then going out with a girl he'd met via the Internet, and she was from PLMGSS.
  
  "Oh," I was a little curious, "what's her name?"
  
  "Catherine - why?"
  
  "Catherine? Um ... does she have a twin sister, Asterine?"
  
  "Yeah! Hey ... how do you know?"
  
  "We went to the same primary school; she was in my primary five and six classes."
  
  (Roger was so tickled by my revelation he'd immediately called Junior up and asked him to come with Catherine to pick the both of us up, but not before he insisted Junior put Catherine on the phone and shoved the receiver in my hand.)



• A couple of years later, Alvina told me she and Libby (with whom I was briefly acquainted in primary school) were working in this café, and - guess what? - there were three girls working with them who knew me.
  
  And why would they know me? Because they were all my classmates from secondary school.



• Just a couple of years ago, when Alvina was still studying in Oz, she told me she'd met and became good friends with a certain Joanne from her university, and hey, she was from the same secondary school as me - did I know her?
  
  I was very pleased to tell Alvina: no - not at all (thank Goddess).



• Then, last night, I discovered a junior of mine from primary school, with whom I have been corresponding for the past twelve years, is currently training under Joyce at their work-place.

WJ once told me that the person sitting next to me on the plane is connected to me in less than six degrees - maybe just three or four degrees away - that's how small the world is. I'd been somewhat skeptical then, but I believe him now.

I used to think it's a small world out there, and that it is constantly getting smaller; it isn't: it's my world that is small.

I'd refused to head to Oz for my degree precisely because there were way too many ex-classmates from not only my secondary and primary school studying there, but also some course and classmates from my polytechnic. I'd thought Welly would be 'safe' since Kiwiland was then way less popular than Oz with Singaporeans.

I couldn't be more wrong.

When I was back home for my summer vacation a couple of years ago, Andrea told me she'd ran into Shauna (who had been her coursemate, and my classmate) who told her she had seen me walking down Courtney Place earlier that year. Shauna wanted to call out to me, but didn't, because I was unfortunately too far away.

The claustrophobe that I am, I've got no one to blame but myself for my small, small world: that's what you get when all your friends are of, more or less, the same background as you, when you stubbornly (and ignorantly) stick with your homogeneous set of contacts.

If I should ever uncover any such 'connections' between my life in Welly and my past and present lives in Singapore, I will surely be asphyxiated by my very entangled web of friends ... if my brain had not already exploded.



(19:38 SGT)