How have you been?

At around 8pm this evening,someone buzzed me over MSN and I was unable to see her name as I did not have her in my MSN friends list.

Her first words to me were "How have you been, my friend?"

Puzzled I tried to recall who she was as her email she used to sign up in MSN seemed so familiar. I immediately asked who she was and there was a pause in her reply, obviously hurt that I was unable to recognize her.

It turned out to be my ex-colleague who left the company and we were close friends. However a bitter argument created a rift between us and when she left the company, in my anger, I did not give her a proper goodbye and proceeded to delete her from MSN list. Silly I know.

Anger does that to me sometimes. It makes me do childish and impudent things that I end up regretting later.

After she left, I thought that was the end of our friendship but pretty soon I no longer was upset with her and felt stupid for not saying farewell.

That was a year ago.A year has passed and now she asks me how i am and again me being me, i made it clear that i had erased her from my MSN list. It's unimaginable to feel so stupid...again.

We ended chatting like old times and about old times. Our weird antics in office and how we would have dinner almost every night after work.

Furious clanking of my fingernails against the keyboard to tell her what i have recently been up to and giggling when we talked about how we were still unable to find any suitable boyfriends made my heart swell with happiness and it provided me a chance to actually rekindle our friendship. It was pretty much like old times when we would sit behind our cubicles and send random jokes to each other on MSN or talk about the latest gadget we would be itching to buy.

"Would you like to catch up?I was thinking of paying a visit to Mandy who will be giving birth soon.." her words appeared in the chat window.

I immediately straigthened up in my chair and typed out an affirmative to the idea. Mandy was our previous Human Resource Manager who left the company as well.

It was obvious we had long forgotten the resentment and anger we had each other.

At the end of our conversation, I told her I had to leave the office.

I said to her , "It was nice talking to you after so long"

"Yeah me too. I'll see you soon"

Her reply made me feel good as I packed up and left the office.

So all in all, besides the datelines i was unable to meet, the nagging bosses and stress i habored throughout the day I went home feeling happy because of a simple greeting from a long lost friend.