But it struck me the other day how uncomplicated my initial friends-making mechanism is here. Back home, I tend to keep to myself, secure in my bubble of friends and with little need to, say, strike up a conversation and friendship with my baristas (which is not to say I don't, but the need isn't there). And if I do have a conversation with a random stranger, I expect that to be it: we had our momentary chat, and now we're off to live our own lives.
And if you look at my friends back home, you will probably notice patterns of common interests, hobbies, etc; it's human nature to seek out people with whom you have something in common, so most if not all of my friendships back home are based off of some sort of deeper connection than simple small talk.
Not so here.
Here, for instance, it makes total sense for me to be friends with Rob, who I met scootering to work one day. I know next to nothing about him, other than that his name is Rob and he's an English teacher from New York. But that, as it turns out, is all you really need here in Kaohsiung.
So, (nerd that I am), I made a flow chart to show the steps foreigners go through while making friends. This is partly just for fun and partly my lame attempt to copy funny things I've seen on others' web sites, like Cracked.com. (I was going to make another one with all the intricacies of making friends back home for comparison, but this chart was complicated enough to make, without adding in more options. Seriously, took me forever just to figure out how to upload it here..so ENJOY IT!)
As you can see, my criteria are pretty simple: can we talk to each other? Do we see each other a lot? Perfect! We are now friends.
Of course, once we make it past this initial stage of friendship you get into all the deeper sharing that makes for friendships worldwide--that's where my wonderful friends here all come into play--but I thought you might be amused by my attempt at a flowchart and the odd (lack of) intricacies that make for foreign friendships.
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