My best friend came to visit me last week. Apart from BE, he is the one friend I had kept away from my family, especially my oldest sister.

Silly as it sounds, my sister had this need to steal my friends. It started with the niece of our neighbor who was studying in Kottayam and used to visit my neighbor once in a while and  ended with my senior at medical college who was staying in the same apartment complex where I was living in KL. The last one was really a traumatic experience. She and I were good friends when we were medical students and imagine my happiness when I found her staying in the same apartment complex. Our children were good friends and I visited her often. My sister came and stayed with me and she and my sister became good friends and their friendship continued even after my sister moved out to her own place to such an extent that my own sister would come to the apartment complex to visit my senior and  not her own sister! One day I visited my senior and Yaya kept saying my sister’s name and finally I asked “is my sister here?” Hearing that my sister very sheepishly came out of the room she was hiding. I have never talked to my senior after that.

Sorry, I was digressing.

Anyway, my best friend had a meeting in Sydney and decided to come over to Brisbane and visit me. He bought me my favorite coffee and a slave.

I like to start my day with tea and then the rest of the day I drink coffee. By now you all know that I am very picky when it comes to the things I use. For coffee, I only use single origin coffee and insist on the bean, roast etc that suits my taste.  When I was visiting India, I loved Kalmane coffee and  my friend bought me a few packets of Kalmane coffee.

But it was the slave that I want to write about.

I had an extensive collection of music when I was studying medicine. I could only study if music was playing in the background. A lot of my music had events/memories attached to it. So every time I wanted to remember something, I played the music that was connected to it. When I was leaving for Malaysia, my mother told me that I can’t take my music tapes as they belong to the family as some of it was bought by my father. It was such a devastating blow. In one strike, she took all my memories away from me. I never ever could collect my own personal collection after that. Over the years, my friends have given me ipod, spottify account etc and I have never used them. I just couldn’t bring myself to start collecting music again. My friend knows about my inability to start a music collection again and how much I miss listening to music

He gave me an Amazon Echo (Alexa) and  linked it  to his account. Not sure how he has done it. He has even sorted out various playlists for me. This morning all I had to say was “Alexa, play my favorite music” and the first song was Dire Straits Money for nothing. It was one of BE favorite song. I remember him singing this song. He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt, white with blue prints, a Khaki shorts and his trade mark hat when he sang this song.

My family is totally screwed up, but I have wonderful friends who will do everything they can to make me smile.

I am happy today.