A friend of mine suffered a loss today. Her father had just passed on and she was still in a pretty big daze when I found out, and when I called almost 7 hours later. My sympathies and my heart go out to her and her family and I'm keeping them in my prayers, too. It's at this point of time that all I can (and want to) do is to envelop her in a big hug.

After writing a testimonial for Linus to aid his immigration process, I broke down before emailing it to him. It hurt to think about it. Basically what I wrote in the testimonial was four years of a close friendship crammed into half an A4 page of text. It wasn't easy, I wanted to write so much more, but as advised, I kept it short and concise.

So, Linus is leaving for Belgium some time in July. I would honestly hate to see him go, but we all have to go seek our own destination one way or another. Earlier on we were discussing how to keep in contact with crappy timezone differences. Jane, Dongli and Wenting in Singapore, Linus in Europe and me further back in the United States.

Just thinking about him leaving and my eventual departure made me sad, too. He said that it will help us be constantly connected, no matter where we are. When I mentioned that he was making me cry, he said, "That's why instead of crying, I'm thinking of solutions." So okay, his solutions are making me cry.

I can't bear to think of how much I'll miss Linus. Linus, Jane, Dongli, Ting and Mich have made up my more stable circle of friends (the others are gamers, go figure), and we've hung out almost every other week or more for the past four years or so. It's not something you can just leave and let go. I know which ones of us will cry when Linus finally flies to Belgium, and I know I'm going to be one of them.

I'm just wondering if people will feel the same way about me leaving, too.

That selfish thought aside, I'm also wondering if our friendship would be the same across the continents. It won't be exactly the same of course, with a few of us not physically there to participate. It's painful to consider. We'd have entirely different things to talk about, and although it might be a refreshing change for a while, sometimes what you need is familiarity.

... anyway, I'll think about this later.