How to make friends, and change your life

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It seems when your travelling or living o/s on the working holiday visa, everything in your life seemingly happens on this bad 1970's sci-fi style film warp speed. Jobs, livings arrangements, holiday plans, friendships and romances. I have been taken aback by this sudden pace, and discussing this curious phenomenon with some of my housemates and other travellers.

I think it extends on a fact I was talking about last week. You see, you start here with very few or no friends, social contacts, romantic developments or the like. So for the first time since you were possible 4 and starting Kinder, you have to go out and make contacts and hopefully develop a social circle, and much like those 6 year olds you see on summer holidays - it goes something like 'Oh your travelling, I'm travelling, you have a few friends, I have a few friends, you live in my near vicinity, we should go have drinks and be friends'!!!!!!!!! No screening process of would that person fit into your life, are they the type of person you wish to associate with, be seen with, go shopping with, gossip with etc. It is completely stripped back (like most of your life) to just an easy assurance of company and friendships without al these other cluttering life factors.

Take for example my sense of excitement that I am playing host to a few people I met from Amsterdam this weekend, and visited the other weekend in London. After such a quite weekend being ill, I am full of excitement and anticipation of seeing them and having a great weekend in their easy company once again. Or the fun and great time I had when Emily came down last weekend to visit me for a fun Sunday in Brighton. I met Emily while travelling through the Croatian leg of my European tour. A good Melbournian girl with an 'up-for-it' personality, I waited for her at the station and greeted her with all the gusto and excitement of seeing an old friend for the first time in a very long time. We cruised the curio shop, laughed at me trying to make my style more eclectic by trying on recycled retro clothing, had a long lunch, checked out the famous Brighton Pier, wandered 'The Lanes', enjoyed glasses and glasses of Baileys in the pub and an afternoon full of long girly chats. It was like I had known her for years. In fact I knew her for 12 days, somewhere back in July! But it was enjoyable and fun, and this seems to be how most all friendships are formed.

Even Emily had to agree, and she was the prime example of how the same principle works with romantic relationships. Here to throw caution to the wind and challenge the way she would normally go about things (sounds familiar eh?) She met Greg, an ex-pat. Normally maybe back home she would never thought about dating this guy, let alone friends, but again with this 'thrown together' feeling of the universe she has found herself crazy about the guy in only a matter of brief time. The number of other people with the same story is endless amongst the expat community.

It makes you wonder sometimes whether back at home you just allow to many competing pressures to have more credence than they are worth. Yes we may have a lot of friends already, no that person may not be the 'type' of person you would usually 'associate' with, but maybe that is all just ridiculous, and we need to step back and enjoy the beauty of enjoy a person. Who they really are, and the different colours they can introduce in your life? Maybe old mother England has got a few more important lessons to teach me than I had ever contemplated for myself?

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