Offloading: Completed.

Paris Hilton has made famous the three letters “BFF” when she called Nicole Richie that in their infamous reality TV show. For the benefit of those who don’t know what BFF is, (get out from under the rock already!) it stands for Best Friends Forever.

Do I hear you ask what is the difference between a BFF and a BF (Best Friend)?

In my interpretation, those two labels are vastly different. A BF is simply, in all point blank sense of the word, a friend who have known you for such a long time and gone through so much shit with you (and from you) that you can abuse him/her left right centre without any guilt whatsoever. (Right, my Queen?)

A BFF, on the other hand, has a slightly mocking tone attached to it. (Hello? It came from Miss Hilton!) The contemptuous use of the word “forever” connotes that this is someone you met not too long ago but you two have clicked so well and so spontaneously that you deemed it appropriate to bestow the label of “best friend” onto them unconstitutionally. Unlike a BF however, you may not have the privilege of abusing a BFF in the same evil manner but there are many things you can get away with such as calling them at odd hours with frivolous problems, making them hold your hair up while you puke and borrowing clothes, makeup and time without returning them.

In the context of our modern society where people move around so much, it is most likely you and your oldest and bestest friend, i.e. BF, are living miles and miles apart from each other. That is why most people tend to adopt a local BFF who is physically nearby and whom you get to see more often than your BF. This also means that your BFF invariably has to take on the support function of your operational day-to-day problems.

For all the reasons mentioned above, I found myself having a BFF in Singapore and feeling slightly annoyed she has to leave the country for what seems like forever.

Standard conversation before one of us leaves the country:
Frou: You are leaving me to rot in Singapore by myself!
BFF: You ownself rot!
Frou: What if I die and no one knows?
BFF: I’ll look out for the news in The New Paper when I get back.

(It’s all macho bullshit hard love. We’ll be sms-ing like mad anyway….)

The BFF has decided go away for a week to teach her students how other people survive outside of Singapore. You’ll be surprised just how ill-equipped local kids these days are when dealing with the world outside the comfort zone of their air-conditioned island. In other words, she was made a very irritated and grumpy educator the whole trip.

Every time I catch her online, I will (in my not so good Robin William impersonation) greet her “GOOOOOD MORRNIIING VIETNAAAAM” of which she will merely grunt in response. Her standard reply to my “How is your day?” is always “sai”. She also refuses to get me a souvenir T-shirt that says “I survived Nam.” She is so not a happy camper, that one.

I was looking forward to her return impatiently because it was impossible to offload important but totally inane daily information when she is so far away. I even have to send my usual drunken sms-es to someone else.

So it wasn’t unusual at all that the first thing I said to her when we met up the day after she return was not “How’s your trip?” but my immediate physical discomfort which is that I lost a lot of blood the night before. She congratulated me for not having a bun in the oven and as I went on a diatribe about the constituency of the bloody discharge, she sang “Bleeding Love” way too loudly and off-key. Our male climbing friend sitting next to us threw us a look of utter disgust and took off.

After we got that urgent inane thing out of the way (I am referring to the topic of my womanly problem, not the climbing dude), we started updating each other about our general sense of well-being (the answer is still “sai”), gossips about people who know (e.g. who said what about who on which day), gossips about people we don’t know (e.g. which celebrity looks like “sai” in which event), the local news (which led to inappropriate imitation of white tigers and poking thereof) and even international news where she used the phrase “in a better economic situation” and I have to stop to congratulate her for sounding intelligent for once and she responded by cupping her face in both hands and making a bimbo face.

She tells me that it is indefinitely better talking to me after spending a week with the brats. I will take that positively even though being compared to a bunch of kids who knows not is not exactly a compliment...

It’s good to have you back, BFF! Zzz….