Encounters

When I was on my way to pick up some cupcakes lunch today, and was just turning off Harwood to Bidwell, a Japanese lady came up from behind and greeted me. (And I'm guessing Japanese as most Asians that come to Vancouver to study are from Japan.) I greeted her a bit unsure what she wanted - but all she wanted was to have a chat. She told that she had just moved into Vancouver couple of days ago and had started her language course today, and just wanted to talk to someone. So we chatted for a while - she didn't speak very good English but she tried - she said that it was difficult to find friends here which I sympathised with, and she was on her way to phone her husband and her family who she missed terribly. Then we were on Davie and she went the other way and I went the other - I don't even know her name.

Since I became friends with Chu - must be about five or six years ago now - we've always talked on the phone weekly. Can't remember many (any?) occasions when we've missed it - and even a conservative estimate on how much we've spent on phone bills would be over £4000 or $10,000 (Canadian!). Of course, worth every penny, but I couldn't help feeling totally smug when we spent almost record four hours on the phone today - and that's using Skype the internet phone that we finally got working, so we didn't pay a cent for it. This rate it shouldn't take us too long to match the hours we've paid for... and show the finger to BT, NTL and all the other companies that have charged extortionate rates for our friendship.

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