A Place with Friends

Translated…

My friend made bad investments, and I’d been told, that he’d suffered, very serious losses, and it’d also, impacted his confidence level, he’d become, totally, depressed, and he’d often, fallen into the pits of self-denial.

That day, he’d told me he’d made up his mind to leave the city, to dodge all the close friends, families, and the coworkers too, to live a simpler kind of life. “How do you feel about Yunlin? I want to restart over there.”

doing things together as a group…not my photo.

“Great!”, the locals are friendly, familiar, life is plain, but you can feel easily fulfilled, and more importantly, there are, a ton of friends who will be willing to help out, whether it be finding a place to live in, a job, or, simply, for the sakes of, recuperation, it’s the top choice! I’d started, scanning through the information files inside my brains, so he can be prepared for his move.

As I saw him again, he’d glowed once more, and his thinking process became sharper than ever. I was curious, as he’d not started, his move yet, and I couldn’t possibly put what I have to good use. And this time, he’d taken the normal ways of his stature of rushing, being forceful, and right-to-the-point, and slowly told me, “You know, we still need friends in our lives…………”, before he finished speaking, everybody who was there burst out laughing. Surely, friends are those who can give you a mental, emotional boost as you’d needed them to, when you’d suffered the losses in your lives.

This also made me recalled a voting thing online: the hardest city or town in Taiwan to go to? Everybody online chimed in, “Keelung, Taoyuan, Hsinchu, or, Yunlin?” “This place has absolutely NOTHING special about it, no sights, no foods that are savory………” I caught this news, as I was, dining, and the food almost came out of my mouth as I’d tried not to chuckle, boy, this, is too amazing!

I can bet, that those difficult to visit places, are those places without those you’re familiar with, those you called friends. But, think about it, when you think of the best place to hang out in the world, it’d be a place, filled with your friends.

For instance, many years ago, I’d waved goodbye to a long period of fish-and-chips, English breakfasts, followed the footsteps of my friends from school, entered into her Thai and Indian friends’ and coworkers’ kitchens: there’s a lot to learn about spices, cloves, turmeric, nutmeg, mustard seeds, sour milk, or coconut milk combo, to make the wide variety of tastes, studied it, ground it up, cooked on a slow burning fire, and, turned up the heats, to get the sauces to dry up a bit, in the mysterious, rich sauces, I’d learned with the ladies from various nations, ways to cook, and, from the pots and the pans, we’d become, great friends.

The city of fashion, or the city of designs, it’s all fine, and, there are, a wide variety of aromatic scents in my memories, and on my trips, I’d remembered, an assortment of aromas too, and not just the must-see sights. Afterwards, I’d gotten lost, in the small Turkish, Bengal shops in the city, and forgetting to leave, in this meditation between my sense of smell and taste, I’d discovered this city in a new light.

“let’s do it”!!!  Not my photo still…

And so, wherever there’s friends, no matter how hot the tourist attraction sights, you can make it into a meaningful place. With the friends’ special interpretations of places, inside that pocket of his, with the sights recommended by the websites, those privately enjoyed places became, yours too. You’d started developing that sense of expectation to the place, and started up your imaginations, it’s as if, you have on, a brand new pair of glasses that showed you a brand new world, in a brand new light.

So, there’s no hardest places to travel to in the world here, only the loneliest. So, go find yourselves some friends, whether if you’re in the valleys or the peaks of your own lives right now, the place with a friend, would be, the best place for you to be, to go to in the world.

This showed how social we humans are, how we relied on friends and others to make our lives meaningful, and, traveling, is better, with a friend who shared similar values as you do, but sometimes, you’d wanted to just, go off on your own, and be alone!