I know some of you are eagerly waiting for the Maldives photos. To be honest, I haven't really found time to sort out the photos. So you guys have to wait. Haha. Anyway, the best ones are already on Facebook.
If I had to pick on just one theme/topic to talk about for the year of 2012, that would be friendships. Not my health - even though I have been quite sick for the first half of the year and spent about $600 on doctors and check-ups/tests. I'm fine now. Not my job - since everything is confidential and the only thing worth disclosing is that I have passed my probation and awaiting the official letter for confirmation. Yay. Not my relationship status - since I'm still single. Am contented and not looking. Not my financial status - I'm relatively poor, at least that's what I think, until the day which I finish servicing my university tuition fees loan, which is about $25000. Grr.
For those who don't know, I have started (or rather, revived) my ranking of friends in 2010. There's no formulae or algorithm involved, the scoring is based on 1 to 20 (first being 20 pts, 20th being 1 pt) and is done monthly. Thus, the maximum points one can get is 240 points a year. The purpose of this ranking is not a competition to see who's first and who's not (anyway, there's no prize), and it's just a way for me to know which friends have been there for me, or which friends I have not met for a long time and need to catch up, etc.
Anyway, this year was slightly more sensational because I have gotten into quite a number of disagreements/quarrels with friends. The cause of the friction is largely due to work (not my work, but work in general) and priorities. Different people have varying priorities in life, and with relationships and now work coming into the picture, friendships have started to take backseat among some of my friends. Oh well, it's their life and I don't really wish to comment.
My personal principle is always to work hard and play hard. There's a time to work and slog, and there's also a time to play, and playing includes meeting friends over a meal and celebrating one another's birthdays. Some people claim to be very, very busy but no one can be perpetually busy. If someone says he/she is busy for 3 times or more, he/she is just saying you are not important to him/her and he/she sees no need to "waste" time seeing you. At least that's how I see it. And I take offence. :P
Moving on, I have collated some statistics from my 3 years of ranking. Just a point to note, the December results are unlikely to affect the result for this year, unless something catastrophic happens.
This year, the average number of years I have known my Top 10 friends have plummeted to 7.3 years. Quite shocking. Assuming that all 10 people had remained the same, the number should increase by 1. It's not so bad for the Top 20 case, but the number has declined as well. This probably means I'm either losing friends rapidly, or making new and better friendships within the year, or both. The only consolation is that the core, which consists of about 5-6 friends, has been very solid in the top places throughout the years so the figure will still be anchored to a certain extent. (For example, if you had a friend whom you know for 20 years, then that would contribute a value of 2.0 to the average of the Top 10 figure.)
Hmm, I doubt people actually do up such statistics, but I wonder if it is a norm for the number to be declining. Haha. Let's see what happens next year.