how friendship begins

Finally done with my marketing homework for tomorrow. You can read it below if you understand spanish (or more specifically understand my spanish with lots of mistakes ;) ). The reading was pretty interesting - the first 5 chapters in a book called Long Tail (check out the link for a description of the concept). I find the example of the firm Lulu really interesting, how to connect producers and buyers of niche products. This opens my mind for some new business ideas...

This week-end I went with Bernard, Tim and Patrick from uni for a small two-day excursion into Chiles central valley. We did some hiking (or barely, it was a one hour walk) and wine-tasting. To be honest most of the time was spent in our rented car cruising around the landscape, but we had a really good time and ticked of a lot of places on the map.

Going abroad alone means putting yourself in a position where you have to make new friends and be very social. I find this part of going on exchange as really fun and interesting. Back home you have so many old friends that you barely have time to keep in touch with all of them, never the less find any new friends, but going abroad this forces you to be that social person connecting with a lot of new people.

I believe meeting new friends in this way passes through certain phases. Coming on exchange you are open to everybody and try to make as many connections as possible. Then you start hanging out more and more with those people you feel you have the most in common with. What I believe though really builds friendship are the internal jokes and stories. Those things that happen when you are spending time together and that you can always fall back upon as a pillar in your friendship. It also unfortunately shuts other people out of a group and the more internal jokes and stories you have the harder the group will be to penetrate for outsiders. That is why trips like this week-end are so important. You get to know each other much better than before when hanging out constantly for 2 days and you start having a common ground of internal jokes and stories binding you together.

The internal joke concept is extremely evident in the case of my group of friends from the SSE. After hanging out very closely for around four years now the amount internal jokes, comments and stories is so vast that it is almost impossible for anybody to get in to the group. It is almost impossible for ourselves to keep track of all the nicknames and jokes. What is good with it though is that it has almost created a fear of missing out from common events. You do not want to miss a big dinner party, a trip or not even a lunch of fear of loosing out on the latest stories or not knowing what the internal jokes come from. This makes the group even tighter as you can always count on people making an effort to get together and see each other when the opportunity arises...

Enough with the blogging for now. Going eating at a Chilean restaurant (that means a lot of meat) with Ari my roomie (and apartment owner) and his friend that is here visiting us...