8 kinds of friends you make in University

I am often in a dilemma when it comes to figuring my friendships in university. I never succeeded probably. But as the title of this post goes, I would like to talk about the types of friends I've made over these four years. I hope some of these might ring a bell somewhere, but I might just be a weird person so don't worry if you find this absolutely off the rocks.

1) The Heartwarmers
These are the friends that just have their little ways of snuggling up to me with their little words and actions out of the blue. Their love comes in all sorts of shape and sizes. Some of them put up a louring exterior, but carry the most tender of hearts within. Some of them pop up at the most unexpected moments, reminding you that they still care for you when you begin to feel all disheartened over the disappointments from life's struggles. They may not always be friends you hang out with everyday (at least for me), but somehow that flame that sustains the friendship just survives the cold. They're keepers to me, and they will be those whom I would mostly definitely wish to keep in time to come.

2) The Schoolwork Spouse
These are the friends you meet and work with on a daily basis. They are likely to be one of your closest friends in school and you've shared chummy moments with them on many occasions. They may also be your biggest source of heartaches when it comes to friends. Attempts at crossing the boundary of schoolwork is often a shaky and intimidating affair as you are afraid to find out that all these declarations of adoration and love towards each other as friends were mere balls of fluff that disappeared with nary a flash of brilliance under the scrutiny of our self centered hearts. You don't know if you will remain friends even though it seems like you are some sort of best friends, and this dissonance will eat you inside out (especially if you pretty much know that it will all turn to shit and nobody bothers once you graduate).

3) The Frenemy (the bitchy stuff that dramas are made of)
Ever got a sneaky feeling that beneath those nods of approval and exhortations to take up that rare opportunities lies something somewhat nasty? Frenemies are often a sticky mess. You invest time and emotions unwittingly when they first seemed so interested in you and you form fast friends. Then you start hearing inconsistencies from the stuff they say to you, and the stuff they say to others. Before you know it, some pivotal event occurs and they jump on the bandwagon of laser fingers, determined to singe through the fabric of your reputation with farcical stories about you that other mindless people on the bandwagon have bought.

4) The Impossibles
You tried to be friends with the best of intention. It was fine when it was lukewarm at the start. But by some event that artificially hastened the formation of a closer bond (like an exchange, or a close knitted committee), you find out that each of you are akin to the like poles of a magnet, you can never be close friends (or much friends) as fundamental differences in your characters just repel each other. It doesn't have to mean that someone was an absolute bitch, but it just didn't work out, and it probably never will.

5) The Social Media friend (a.k.a Facebook friend)
By some forgotten reason you have this person as your Facebook friend on your wall, not that you actually know this person, but that you've spoken to them once during some orientation camp, or they've added you so they could tag your photos or what not. I often struggle with this group of people, afraid that the hearty wave of my hand will land flat on their cold stoned faces. It's not fun when you have to awkwardly pretend you're saying hi to some imaginary apparition behind them to reduce your weirdo meter. An even weirder phenomenon occurs when they actually start liking and commenting on your social media stuff. Acquaintance aren't supposed to know much about your life or start stalking you right? Writing this post kind of makes me wonder, maybe I should start clearing these people up or to formally make friends with them.

6) The Hi-Bye Network
You've met somewhere and hit it off to a considerable extent. When you meet in school, you exchange your Hi-Bye wavecard to remind that you still remember each other. These are usually interesting people that you're keen to keep in contact with (its a good thing), and they often can blossom into awesome friends with similar passion and vision in life. More importantly, they constitute the diversity in your pool of friends that you never know one day, they might just be the missing piece of the puzzle that unlocks your purpose in life. Exaggerations aside, you probably never got to the stage where you started wondering if they've drifted or gotten closer to you as a friend. Maybe they never will.

7) The 7-11 friends
You guys started out because they were like a 7-11 store -  Convenient, interesting and always there for you 24/7. You got all caught up with them when you started school or joined a new hall and everyone's just so strung up with the novelty of making new friends and making an impression on each other you act all chummy and you think these friends are the best you've ever met (and you will probably neglect your own friends as a result). Time passes by and the novelty wears off both ways, and you just drift apart as quickly as you formed. Sometimes its because someone got out of hall, found another bigger and more happening group of friends, found prettier and hotter girls to club with and to associate themselves with. And then you realise, it was all just a brief friendship of convenience that was nice and fun, but that was just it.

8) For the lucky ones - The friends for life
You don't know really know why, but this group of you just bunched together at the most random of circumstances and nobody ever left the group ever since. When you need a helping hand or feel like partying, they are the first to come to mind and you know they will be there no matter what. You genuinely care for each other, and you are even good friends with their parents. Not many of us still have the space in our hearts to accommodate such a demanding, yet rewarding group of friends that definitely defined your years as an undergraduate. Even after you graduate, you're always actively meeting up and planning for that next awesome trip together. You've gone beyond the trepidation of affirming the closeness of your friendship, and nobody doubts each other anymore.

I guess that's the end of this random piece of writing. Let me know if you guys think in the comments below!

Fujifilm xt-1 review update! + sneak peek on Fuji 23mm 1.4R

"and so he deliriously stumbled onto his bed and slumbered on for days, not quite sure where his life was headed to now that he handed in his baby, wrapped tenderly in a clean brown envelope..."

Here's my melodramatic recount of my life ever since I handed in my dissertation. Don't you love how we all like to act all literary and creative with big words with irrelevant pictures? (Instagram is chock full of it haha)

Anyway, I feel great! Freedom calls for another follow up post on monoclebarnacle on the Fujifilm xt1 that I've been using for the past week or so.

Some thoughts about the camera:

1) It's really good-looking. Everywhere I go, people notice the good looks and praise the  feel of it. Even girls with disdain for geeky techie stuff can't help going wow. If there was a Mr. Universe for cameras, The XT-1 is going to be a real strong contender for the crown. Heh.

2) The directional pad feels like that old Playstation controller in the Challenger store that got ravaged by the crummy fingers of angry young schoolboys. It has little to no tactile feedback and sometimes I have to consciously look at the back of the camera to know what I'm pressing. It's soft and a little too shallow for rapid operation. Not my favorite, after coming from DSLRs, where the directional pads feel much more robust.

3) Jpegs straight out of the cameras are pretty good. A little smeared here and there which gets on my nerves but the colours really astound me at times. Not always the most accurate in white balance and colours but its a pretty charming package as a whole. Not to mention the recent dry spell turned Singapore into a dry and dusty pseudo-autumn landscape. Pretty nice for picture taking though, if the haze wasn't in the equation.

Now let the pictures do all the talking. All of these pictures are not edited at all, shot mostly on Provia (standard) or Astia (soft).

Pretty lovely isn't it? For something totally unedited! (At least not on a computer)

Next up: I've just gotten the Fujifilm 23mm F/1.4 R prime lens.

Here's a sneak preview of it!

A real hefty lens with a 62mm filter thread size. As with all fuji lenses, this one feels really solid to the touch, with metal parts used throughout the lens. And I have to say, this lens is pretty sharp wide open at f/1.4! The depth of field is pretty hard to control but I'm seeing some real promising stuff coming out of this lens! I will update again once I've shot some serious stuff with it.

Before I end, here's a little camera geek tidbit for you guys out there (that's reading this virtual space). 

White Balance

You've heard this word being thrown around by pompous photographers when you've got a photo that's really yellow or orange (sounds familiar?). We kind of know what is it, but how is it relevant to photography after all? Here's a chart for you to know what exactly is colour temperature in everyday light.

Credit: www.digitalcameraworld.com

So what does this have to do with your camera? When you take a picture with auto white balance (most ppl use this), it tries to sense the colour of the light in your photo to accurately portray the degree or warmness/coolness correctly. However most small cameras are quite poor at this as their auto white balance abilities are pretty poor, which means it can't sense the colour of the scene properly when its out of its range (such as way too yellow/orange). Photographers use a grey/white card to counter this, by taking a photo with the grey/white card in the scene first, after which they can use it as a point of reference for all the subsequent photos taken. If I'm not wrong, you can just shoot anything that's pure white in colour for reference later on. From there, you can just adjust the temperature till the paper is pure white and you will get an accurate white balance! Be sure to employ this little trick the next time when you edit your photos!

Feel free to comment if you have something you would like to read about the next time!