As you, the reader may have already seen from my previous post, I treasure my friendships. To be more specific, I treasure good quality friends, the ones with whom you strike up a bond that lasts just about forever, with great depth of interaction and adds something to both parties’ lives, and ones you’ll definitely remember to the end of days. I rate friendships [much as it’s perhaps ethically debatable to rate friendships, but let’s for writing’s sake] on several criteria, feasibility being first and foremost, followed by longevity and effort. If a friendship can last an age and a score, there has to be something about it that allows the relationship to be maintained, thus feasibility is the highest of priorities. A good friend is someone whom, to me, I can get along with in any weather. Moreover, that friend adds value to my life, through the depth of our interaction. While it is true that friendships come and go, there will always be a few which I will always make an effort to preserve and maintain, by virtue of their depth.

That little segue completed, provides a fitting lead-up to this next discourse on Aiman Azri. As far as friends go, Aiman’s up there with the closest of them. One of only two friends with whom I maintain a close and near-constant interaction with from high school, he has been a friend for the past eight years, though we really only became close in the last couple of years of high school. Aiman provides an excellent example of how a friendship can last by virtue of connection. I always thought he was an enigmatic sort of person, one whose interests evidently seemed focused away from high school matters, but then that’s Aiman, a very out-of-the-box sort of person.

One of the first things that caught my eye was his English prowess. You could be forgiven for looking at Aiman and thinking he was nothing more than your conventional game-fanboy Malay guy, until he opens his mouth. Anyone who knows Aiman would know of his acerbic spin on things, good when you wish to have a good laugh, bad if you wish to cross lances with him. A very well-read person, he relishes opportunities to further widen his prowess and utilise it, which makes him adept at amongst other things, Scrabble and public-speaking. Indeed Aiman was a school rep for both. Already aware of his gift of the gab, I got to see it in action at the ISKL SEA forensics tournament back in 2004, in which we both participated. It was also great fun [and painful] battling it out with him over Scrabble, which we still do today. Being a school rep he was always a tough cookie, and is still a killer player to this day. It is perhaps fitting at this point that I insert a sportsman’s salute for many a fine battle waged. The 500-point thrashings he used to dole out were the motivation which spurred me to develop my own game, and it is perhaps my greatest tribute to him that I now can almost match his game.

In a big way, connecting on these levels helped establish a firmer friendship between us than I have been able to with most people. Along the way we found we could associate on and share just about anything, making him valuable company all these years, that even when I’m in Australia I ensure I maintain regular connection with him. Not many friends can be said to have changed me, but Aiman is one of those rare few. Knowing him inspired my own confidence in a big way, providing me the impetus to opening up and being more self-expressive. As has already been stated, his consummate talent at Scrabble spurred on my own development, and he has been able to encourage me not to take a sweepingly generalist view on things such as gaming. In a slightly more emulatory vein, I could perhaps claim that my own occasionally acerbic views are partly due to my exposure to Aiman’s own firebrand humour, and there isn’t a moment where we’re together that isn’t enjoyable. I am happy to have a friend with whom I can connect on so many levels with, and truly appreciate his company.

Aiman is Alissa’s boyfriend. To view his blog, visit http://mistcakes.blogspot.com