I can’t stress the urgency of this matter enough. I work five days a week. It’s very easy for me to skip my weeks without deliberating over it since I don’t go out that often. When I do, what usually happens is I’ll plan an impromptu get-together on the weekend itself. The downside is the likelihood of last minute invitations succeeding is lower than normal.

Of course, you could say I just need more friends who improvise their schedules. In a sense, you’re right, friendship and dating is a numbers game. However, there are many more constraints like the proximity of the parties, the frequency and intensity of interactions. The latter requires chemistry, time and effort. The question is where can I find the Others? Now that depends on who and what I am looking for which will be based on my interests.

It’s like I want to be met a certain way but I’m unaware of it or I don’t know how to communicate it to other people. I’m not sure if there are other ways of being met that are adequate substitutes. This post is meant to remedy that by making legible how I want to be met and exploring the ways I can negotiate and nudge how I’m being met towards how I want to be met.

I enjoy intellectual conversations on a wide range of topics from history, politics, religion, feminism, intersectionality, “reverse racism is not racism because of the power differential” etc. Basically ideologies and things that require thinking. Although admittedly, hard sciences like pure Mathematics isn’t my strong suit. I love to dissect and analyse the most recent outrage news. In fact, I did two posts on OKLETSGO lewd remarks - that saga actually prompted Mdm President Halimah to write a Facebook post to condemn it.

I enjoy hearing and sharing personal triumphant stories, cautionary tales, humorous encounters and how someone finesse through a difficult situation. I have a lot of empathy for people with family problems, this shit is real. I would like to think I appreciate people from all sorts of backgrounds especially those that teach me something I don’t know.

How do I relate to other people? I want to challenge them as I want them to challenge my ideas and beliefs. I realise I have a tendency to prefer one mode of communication - nerdtalk, insighttalk - over other modes. However, it’s worth noting that this is just one mode of communication best reserved for close friends.

My mistake was in assigning more weight to certain parameters (intellectual vs feeling/concern etc) and being oblivious and reluctant to switch it up when it no longer fits the situation. My current priority is to adapt the mode of communication that best fits the person or situation. Not everyone is interested in examining thoughts like Graft and Serena. In a sense, I inhabit the thinking world.

When I was younger, I used to value deep conversations over all other forms of conversation because to me that’s the end goal. Small talk was pointless to me. In hindsight, I felt that way because I was lonely and insecure. Now I find small talk incredibly useful as a catalyst to lower the activation energy required for future collaboration.

Last updated: 25 July 2021