Odoriko

Thursday night, met a primary school friend for dinner on his invite. It’s been many years since we last met. I wasn’t invited to his wedding dinner some years back as he didn’t have enough primary school friends to make a table, so I was keen to catch up on the updates to his life this time.

He wanted to meet me on Friday at 1st, but I tried pushing it to Thursday as I wanted more time to do some year end reflections & go through with what I hoped to do this year.

At the meetup, he revealed to me that he will be divorcing soon. While I never met the wife in person before, it does surprise me a little for I know he has dated her for many years since they are very young, & went on various overseas trips together too before marriage.

It seems the overseas trip they had 2 years ago was the catalyst as he felt his wife has spent way too much in that trip, had arguments & things broke down from there.

A part of me wanted to suggest alternatives to consider, but upon learning that his wife is the 1 who initiated it, & that the separation is close to the 3–4 years requirements for divorce already. I stopped myself as it seems too late at this stage.

He then told me his wife has since changed his mind & regretted it, but by then he is determined to finalise the divorce & will push through it with a few more months of separation to go.

So I asked him what he has learnt to see what might be useful for me.

We also spend some time talking about another mutual primary school friend. He didn’t have any social media, but we remember him well because he is the most carefree person we ever met & he never cared if others laugh about his hobbies or way of speech no matter how old he gets on his enthusiasm about Pokemon or other typical “childish” hobbies. I think I should try to dig out his phone number again to see if he is open to a catch up.

I guess life is truly un-predictable. Going back home, It came to my realisation that the song I’ve been listening to every day for the past weeks, Odoriko is a song about the person who initiated a breakup.

Which is quite a coincidence.

Something to think about in the remaining days

Later we continued our chats on whatsapp where I suggested him some video games to play.