My Chicago friend is the first person I know from internet. We started with talk requests on unix nearly 10 years ago and are amazingly still in touch now. He's back in Singapore for his vacation so I met up with him today for a late afternoon tea at Borders.

Topics range from:
- the comparison of Tom Clancy's books to their big screen adaptations (he explained that the books are technically detailed to the point of describing an explosion for a whole chapter; while on the movie screen, it's a split second affair and hence doesn't do justice to the books);
- Jin Yong's Chinese martial arts novels (he said there're too many superfluous descriptions which could be skimmed through while reading... I could imagine a sort of kinship between Tom Clancy and Jin Yong);
- the state of the hair care industry (his rationale is unlike the PDA industry where innovation is still highly necessary, the hair care industry is a matured one... everything that can be done to hair HAS been done to it).

I would say rediscovering old friends is a highly recommended activity.