So hello monday blues and goodbye happy CNY week. So yes, I am official 22 now and I still won't admit it ( at least not to the treadmill or cross trainer, I still key in 21). But regardless of the change in age I experienced over the past week, I have to say that my week was nothing my awesome.

How not to love my friends back in Singapore, the crazy one in UK and the awesome ones here. Thank you all for making my birthday memorable. But the most memorable thing happened was when my cutest parents started singing happy birthday over the video cam and pictorial evidence right here.

Aren't they cute? I miss them so much.

So anyway, I loved the well-wishes, the celebratory dinner and the cupcakes. Thank you Velda, Sarah and Tong!

So, now to serious thoughts. Before I embarked on this exchange programme, I asked myself what I really wanted to get out this. At that time, I told myself I wanted to meet as many people as I could. And that was what I really set out to do.

Now I am about a month into this exchange programme here and counting the number of foreign friends I've made? Probably 3 or 4. How many keepers as friends? Probably none. And I know it as well, friends are friends when they treat you like you are worth it. Party people and people you have fun with aren't really friends especially when all they do is to get drunk and do drugs. So much for networking. Of course let's not forget the Pinkertons. Some people just want to be friends because we're exotic looking and we're Asians.

I'm glad I met awesome people like Anthea and Wang Hao, the people who go all out for us to show that we matter. And because of that, they matter too. I am not ruling out the possibility of making nice real friends who are foreigners, because that's possible too and I'm all out for it. Until then, these people are really acquaintances for now.