Yesterday I had a voice chat with my roommate John, who’s currently working at Belgium as part of his onsite assignment. He started the conversation by asking me “How are you doing and what are the updates from your side?” I started with “Hey John I’m doing fine here. Things are going as usual…” actually it was a start from my side to give updates from my side. Suddenly John replied me back “Never say like this to someone, especially those whom know you that “Nothing special from my side and things are going as usual. It’s bit irritating…” Anyway we had a nice talk yesterday night and we shared our updates (updates from Japan and Updates from Belgium )

When I applied a second thought on the same, surely the above said kind of reply is a bit irritating. I used to ask someone whom I know the same question and 80% of the replies are “Things are going as usual”. Anyway I am also biased to this answer but normally I’ll have something to say even I start with things are going as usual. (Huh lot of things are happening in my life )

John too was trying to keep-in-touch with me as all we do with our friends by asking this simple well-known question. But most of the people including me limiting the answer in a single line. The answer gives a hunch that we are not interested in talking with that person, we are not ready to share something with him and also there’s a notion that we are giving importance only for the big matters in our life. You can keep thinking on if I answer like this but the thing is, the conversation ends up there. But if we share small things, like “Last week I saw a movie. It is having a good story which is really inspirational” “Work was very tight last week and I had spent a lot time for fixing up the bugs” this will keep the conversation at least for some more time and we will have a quality time with our friends. Surely we will have as many things to share… silly simple things in life. It also having a power to keep the closeness to your friend and we can have different type of replies to the intensity and levels of friends. But we have to keep our friendship and relationships in a good way.

Thanks a lot John for the nice input and pointing out the mistake in my attitude.