Weekend Engagement - Friendship

Ever since the age of internet and improved connectivity, most of our friends come from the cyber realm. It is getting harder to make new offline friends and ensuring these friendship last.

In this post I will be discussing first on making new offline friends and subsequently how to sustain these friendships.

Making New Offline Friends
Before we move to how to make new offline friends, I would like to emphasize that we should also check out friends, classmates or people crossed path with you and catch up with them.

To Make Friends, You Must First Have Exposure - Head out
If we don't even step out of the house, there is no way we can meet new people. With the age of live streaming, even religious services are being livestream-ed and people actually can listen in to sermons at the comfort of the homes instead of heading to church itself for the sermon.

Stop being a couch potato and watch livestreams, head to places of worship, shopping malls or even community centres to meet people. I've meet many people at church whom we just got acquainted by sharing a table at the coffee place and today we are friends. By heading out and taking part in activities like the picture below which I took before the National Day Walk-A-Jog event in my community 1-2 years back.

Meet People with Same Interest
People gathered at the community centre dressed in red and through such event we meet our neighbours and interact with them. From then on, I get to know more people in my neigbourhood. With these, by attending these events frequently, people get to know each other better. Also in the community centres in country, they hold all kinds of classes and have various interest group in things such as gardening, cooking, balloon sculpting, handicraft etc. By meeting like minded people whom are interested in the same things, it will bring in ease to make new friends and people can catch up after the classes or come back for the next class together.

Maintaining Friendships
It is good that we start stepping out of our homes and going out to meet new people. Through those meetings, new friendships are formed. But forming is just the first part of things, the next thing to do is to maintain them.

What works for me most and many fellow Singaporeans is food! Catching up and meeting over food is the best past time and enjoying good food together. Below is a picture which I took during a gathering where we had plenty of good food to share as we catch up and share life.

There is a surge of many cafes recently and I personally think cafe hopping with friends is another amazing thing to do. And if you and your friends have a sweet tooth, meeting up to chit chat and catch up over dessert is also a great thing. Because I quote the words of one of my favourite dessert place:

This is a picture which I took when I last visited them. It's hard to say no to delicious cakes and ice cream.

Another thing that works will be to meet up and do things together like what I mentioned in the earlier section of interest groups. People can meet up and do handicraft together, make beautiful balloon sculptures together and also cook up a wholesome meal then enjoy it together.

Closing
While we are expanding our network on the web, we do still need to meet offline friends and maintain the relationships so that the friendship can last. Don't miss catching up and doing things together.

Remember, don't keep staying at home, go out and meet people!