It's time for farewells: Adieu to J-A 2003/2004 on D-2

M. told me that the classic sign of an extrovert is that one has lots of different groups of friends for different purposes. I thought about that, and decided that is true - I have girl friends for those pour-your-heart-out moments, male friends for teasing, girl friends for drinking, male friends for drinking, uni friends for those pour-your-heart-out moments, uni friends for drinking, and so on. And I'm definitely not a wallflower type.

I sent out an email yesterday telling most of these friends that next Monday would be my last day at work. It took me over half an hour this morning to write responses back to the sixty per cent. of people who asked where I was going next, what I was going to be doing, can we meet up before you leave et cetera. My emotions were on a rollercoaster - people who wrote back saying how excited they were for me made me feel perky and happy, while those who wrote back asking for one last drink made me wonder whether I was foregoing a thriving social life for that of self-inflicted hermitdom.

The procession of farewells will not cease until I leave Hong Kong. There will be a lunch with colleagues today, and a next-next-to-last dinner with some great girl friends later. I feel as though parts of my brain are falling out - doesn't your social circle act as your second memory, reminding you of all the silly/clever/funny/usual things you do? Don't you reflect on how your social circle treats you, and think about how you must reflect on them and vice versa? Don't you have a common ground for thinking about the past, present and future - either as part of a group of single people in their late twenties, a friend of someone in their thirties married with young children, or as a friend of a divorcee in their fifties? All those discussions - however drunken or rhetorical they were - and all those ridiculous moments of laughter and tears are now going to have to be regenerated with someone else, a whole new cast of people I do not yet know. I feel anxious that without these people from my current life around to remind me of who I am, I may become someone else without even realising it.

My furniture is being sold off for castaway prices - piece by piece, someone else will claim them as their own and use them just like I did, only perhaps without abusing them as much. Watching the messages claiming the furniture, it is as if someone is dissecting the person that was 'J-A in Hong Kong, 2003 to 2004' and taking away the parts to some place unknown.

Of course, I've been through this before. How many times have I moved from one country to another in my life? I know I will be re-constructing myself again. Things will eventually make sense again. The little roots I've put down in Hong Kong, though, hurt a little to tear up.