If you guys are interested in those small scale model, you should chek this out:
'2 Sides of Japan' modular Japanese N scale in Australia home page
This is an even crazier model, it won multiple awards already.
I will not give up on my little project, but its slow progress, a lot is going on lately, i just didn't have the time. I start putting some structures together, but never got around to do anything with the layout. The Yamanote train is still in its box. I will attempt to post picture when i get in to full build mode
About friendship, first, to set the context, a bit about my background. I am HK born Chinese. I have an uncle that is Japanese, its not really an uncle per say, one of my mom's side relative is married to him, and it just so happened that when they visit HK, they become very close to my family, so as far as I am concern, he is my uncle and his son is my cousin. Anyways, I lived in Japan between age 7-9, +/-, 6 months as I don't remember the exact duration. Migrated to Canada with my family in 1989, been here since.
Friendship... so I have friends pretty much all over the world, mostly Asian, but I do have friends from different background, as some of my other post suggested, one of my best friend is Italian.
Even with these best friend, I don't see them very often. My 2 best friends(The said Italian and a Taiwanese) are always in touch with me, but only over emails, I see them once a week only because we train at the same Karate dojo, but otherwise, our communication is only limited to electronic.
I have another really good friend, he is no longer in Canada, he moved back to HK for a better job and got married there. The last time we spoke was 3 weeks ago, again, over email. And before that, probably sometime around July of last year. But we manage to maintain that feeling of "close friends". Our last correspondence 3 weeks ago was on the topic of I needing him to locate something for me in HK, while he had similar request for me to find him something in Toronto
These are about the 3 friends that I think are the closest, and we share our deepest secret with each other, including our view over religion and politics, me being the more aggressive and opinionated one. If I am to cheat on my wife, these 3 guys will know it before it even happen... we are that close, but yet we don't hang out on a regular basis, we don't even talk on a regular basis, but deep in our heart, we know we will be there for each other if s**t hits the fan....
I am the kind of guy that have about 200 people on my MSN list and 300+ friends on my facebook list, none of which I actually talk to much, they are really "friends" i mean, as far as I am concern, as long as you know someone, even if you have only met them once, they can be your friend.
In my culture, friendship can be a very very thin relation between 2 people. People that don't care if I die tomorrow or I get married tomorrow.
I remeber at my wedding, both side parents introduce a bunch of "friends" that we have never met before, people that don't really care about us enough to worry whether we are marrying the right person
That said, i strongly agree, friendship can be as simple as seeing the potential of needing help from a particular person, the relation can be built on that... it doesn't have to be a strong bond. I don't think there is such thing as "True Friend", at least I don't believe there to be such thing. Its black or white, you are either friend or not, there is no scale.. some friends are willing to do more for you some are more selfish.... Friends are just friends, there are GOOD friends and bad friends I suppose..
As far as how open i am, I think i am the type that give 75% trust to people around me... i don't see anyhthing wrong with people giving 100% trust or no trust at all, its their choice, but trust has to be in place in order for a relationship to work.. same goes for a romatic relationship, or a owner/pet relation (just look at how a trusting dog behave vs a non trusting one)...
I don't know what i am talking about anymore, brain not functioning right lately....