Forging of companionship

Over the course of more than one year, there has been countless occasions where I have to go into a foreign environment alone with a bunch of strangers, who perhaps may have some friends in the group if they are lucky.

It becomes sort of a "survivability" issue then when you have no one that you are familiar with and there is obviously a need to know some people to look out for each other. I wouldn't say that it is with an ulterior motive that you attempt to befriend other people but more of having the courage.

After the initial awkwardness like " hi, im jun jie. you are?", people tend to ask each other about their background and for those who are your peers, they tend to ask questions regarding your background. In particular, I found the question, "do you know XXX (since you are in this school)?" interesting.

By asking whether i know this person, what does the person hope to achieve? My guess is the need for humans to have a "shared background" where the both of us can identify with. For 2 complete strangers, asking whether one knows someone else seems to be the one of the logical starting points which may allow the conversation to kick off. It also helps to ease away the insecurity that one might have for the other since  the perception seems to be that" if-you-know-that-person-who-is-also-my-friend-then-you-must-be-quite-a-nice-person".

Honestly speaking, I find it rather pathetic to be asked such a question since I really don't see the point in doing so. What good will it do to ask if someone else also know this person? To gossip about the person? That doesn't seem like the morally correct thing to do isn't it.

I feel a better approach will be to find out more about the person, like his interests or his hobbies ( to quote ping yen), so that perhaps you could find a common ground. Through my experience, I realised that joining large organisations/institutions do help much since there is a greater chance of you finding someone with the "shared identity". For example, on the first day of my course which started yesterday, I saw this rather lonely guy in the class who seem to be in the same situation as me,as I didn't know anyone else in the course. So I took up the courage to introduce myself and we had much more things to talk about after we realised that both of us are from PSC so much so that we sat together in class, even though that is quite a tenuous bond that we share.

okay i don't really know what else to say now since im really tired from having a full day lesson.