I am soooo superficial.

Frenemies.

I never understood the depth of that word until recently. Of course you won't find that word anywhere in dictionaries, but I'm pretty sure most of you have encountered frenemity before. Especially those who are insecure, have low self-esteem and are highly competitive, but are actually beautiful, intellegent and popular. Like me.

As most of you have probably deduced, 'frenemies' is a compound of the words 'friends' and 'enemies'. It also came from an episode in SATC. Now, I have very few good friends, a few more enemies, but I have carloads of frenemies. And I use the collective term 'carloads' because, well, most of them have cars. Or most of their fathers have cars they could drive. At this point I have to emphasize that my dad has an excellent car, and has urged me to go get my license. However, my claustrophobia gets the better of me, and frankly, I'd rather be in the passenger seat. Oh dear me, here comes my competitive side, creeping like horns out of my head.

Frenemies are friends that you sometimes have "adversary-feelings" towards. They are those people you sometimes meet for dinner or coffee, you get along pretty well, except that all you talk about are where the best countries they've been to for the past month (ding!), who has the richest husband (ding!), who's had the best sex partner (ding!), who's been to the best spa in town (ding!), and who's got the highest qualification. I don't know about you, but my mind goes ding! everytime I can put a face to the description. And I was just kidding at the last part about comparing qualifications, cuz er hrm, I'm the only one among them pursuing a degree.

Typical conversation:

Her : " Oh I went to this spa at Bugis yesterday..."
Me : " Yeah I went to one at Hill Street last week."

Her : "My phone can take photos..."
Me : "Yeah my boyfriend's phone has a camera, can record videos, is also an mp3 player, AND has my picture on its wallpaper."

What's funny about this whole shebang (No, not She Bangs. Shebang) is that, other than the subtle or even unconscious bragging and competition, they're pretty fun people to hang out with. We meet up once very few months for dinner to catch up (and compare duh) and one even asked me to be her bridesmaid. (Yup, again! One more time and I'll never get married. You know, 3 times a bridesmaid...) I wouldn't say it's totally a bad thing to have frenemies. In fact, it's them who shape me. Friends and enemies are important yes, but frenemies pretty much fill up the gap in between. After all, all things exist for a reason.