I have gotten so used to the expat approach of meeting new people, i.e. you meet, you greet, you smile and by the end of the conversation you go by your instincts to determine if this will work out or not; you make a conscious decision to take this friendship a step further or not.
Don't get me wrong, I do not calculate my friendships but after moving so many times and having to say goodbye even more times, you develop a system of self-preservation. You figure out pretty quickly if you are on the same wave length. Also the person you are chatting with is often an expat and applying the same approach, consciously or unconsciously.
Lately, however, I have realised that there are people I have known for four years now and through circumstances we have only started interacting more frequently in recent months. Two of them - I am afraid to say - are leaving Paris this summer but one is staying.
We both have made a point of meeting each other for dinner, for a drink and communicating via Facebook or SMS more frequently lately. Yesterday we decided to spend a girlie Friday morning together and met on a sun-drenched bistro terrace for a cappuccino. A visit to the YSL foundation to admire his scandalous Spring collection of 1971 was the icing on our cake.
We walked out into the sunshine after an hour's tour and both knew - implicitly - that this friendship was going to work! Yves Saint Laurent will forever be liked to Sweden in my mind!
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