Daily Lesson from Life 14 February 2009

No News Headline as the Theme for today as I want to write about friendship!

I touched down in Beijing International Airport at 6.30am and got a ride from my ex-boss and friend's driver (my friend is out of town). A favour I deeply appreciate as catching a taxi or airport express bus to the hotel is going to be a cold and potentially crowded wait!

Met up with Dr. Ben Tien, CT Tai and family, and Yan for dinner. The food as usual is good but the company is even better! Ben met CT and Yan for the 1st time and by the fact that he is an old friend of mine from Seagram's days, they just connect well. This is the power of friend introducing friends!

We rounded the dinner off with a round of hot chocolates, coffee and beer at a local sports bar watching some English FA Cup matches before knocking off for the night.

Lessons for me are:

1. friendship is important for some people. It can be a great motivator for people to take the troubles to travel far and meet up! For some people it may be something else;

2. when you met good people, it provides greater joys and values when you introduce them to your friends. In this way, the network gets expanded and everyone benefit from knowing another great human being!;

3. after getting to know new friends of friends, it is up to us to make the efforts to keep up. For some the mutual attractions and common interests are so strong that they continue to contact each other on their own steams. For some, maybe the old network still need to create opportunity to meet regularly. Whatever it is, efforts must be made to keep the network going!

I look forward to the next 5 days in Beijing catching up with old friends again!