It's amazing how truly difficult it becomes to find someone you really connect with as you grow older. It seemed so simple when I was in junior high, but now, although the new friends I've made are nice, they just don't strike me as the kind of people I'd really really enjoy being with. They're just not as wild and crazy as my old friends; I can't picture spending a whole entire day with them and actually having a truly good time.

When I say a good time, I don't mean wild drinking, crazy dancing and rampant sex - heck, I don't even get that with my best friends ;) I just mean that I don't think they'll make me laugh and feel like I can be as unashamedly quirky and silly as I am when I'm with those friends I've made in school.

It's difficult to explain, but in school, there wasn't anyone there to judge you that much. You were just people who were studying together, occasionally competing but on the whole, people with a genuine interest in one another's lives. Now... it's like you want new people to like you... so you constrain yourself just a little, restrain your idiosyncratic eccentricities. You're a little wary and keep them in a certain compartment of your life. If they're your work friends, then that's where they'll remain, never to encroach upon other parts of your life. If you happen to mention parts of your personal life to your colleagues, they react as though you've just breached a taboo. As though they're work friends, they don't want to know about your private life, not at all.

What I'm going to write next may seem quite strange to those who know me well. I miss that openness I experienced while in London. I'm not as closed, not as private and restrained anymore, and being back here has only served to reinforce the feeling that I can't really be myself when I'm here. I always get the feeling that people are judging me - too loud, too quiet, too passive, too eager, hair too untidy, too tired, whatever. I wish we could have the openness of the West with the closeness and intimacy of the East. It sounds weird, doesn't it? But that's what I miss.