Some friends are for life, from the minute you say ‘hello’. Some never quite turn into old friends but are always friendly enough. Some friends accompany you on outings, some you might see just twice a year, some are for pints in pubs, some provide shoulders, some are for any old time, any place, anywhere… and then you move to ExpatLand and a whole new set of categories crops up. Worst of these, I have found, is ‘Friends On The Move’, a lonely section at the very back of my mental Rolodex that would have a dark label were it ever part of a real-life filing system.

Transience, that rotten nomadic chestnut, is a thing we expats truly hate about life in a foreign land, and of course it’s not confined to Singapore, it’s global. Hop on to any overseas advice forum and you’ll see threads on relocation, saying goodbye, how to cope with old friends leaving just as the new ones are coming in, expecting smiles and handy social maps. Farewells are a good life lesson in the long run but nonetheless tricky every time. It is far worse for the people on the gangplank, yes, especially as in many cases leaving is something that’s out of their hands. For those waving from shore, though, it’s not exactly a picnic either.

The latest of the leavers drew a standard bland-but-sympathetic response from me, when in fact all I really wanted to email back was:

“You can’t go, what will I do? Remember all the fun times? Wait, we never did karaoke!”

That message remains locked away in my virtual filing cabinet under the dark ‘departures’ section and safely converts, in emailed reality, to a simple sadface.

Ohnevermind: the world is small as well as round and we’ll meet again. To be honest, though, I’d prefer to meet you out here, in that new bar we always said we’d try, wearing the sun frock I got from that shop you told me about that opened just a week before you told me you were leaving. I kept a card for you… oh.

Bon voyage, then, and harden my heart some more #sadface.