A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart, and can sing it back to you when you

have forgotten the words. Good morning to the panel of honourable judges, teachers and friends. On this fine morning, I would like to talkabout Friends. On this planet, who cant live without friends? We need our peers to live our lives, to joke around, and to help us with our mischievous plots. Who would dare to tell an adult about our plans?Friendship is a blessing, and a friend is the channel through whom great emotional and spiritual blessings flow. Friends will cheer us up when we are full of depression. With eyes full of sorrow, we are bound to get attention the moment our friends notice. We usually just want them to hang around with us, to have a good time, to act silly and just be ourselves. Remember the guy you had a crush on? That oh so hot Edward Cullen inTwilight? With his delicious sultry blue eyes and charming British accent thatwould make your heart melt the instant he talks. During the days our favouriteHollywood artistes are famous, we tend to get carried away to Day Dream Land.Students our age are most probably to tell our buddies on how awesome theyare. Im sure none of you would go screaming to your mum and say Mum!Robert Pattinson as Edward Cullen is soooo hot! Im going to read the third booklater. She would have said, Stop reading all those vampire stories and get backto studying. Will your friends react the same way as your mum? Of course not.They would sit down with you and say, Tota lly. I wish Im Kristen Stewart. Iwould get to act and hang out with him off set. Acting as Bella would be so cool.This settles it. Our spirits would have been brought down if we didnt have any friends.As well as our fantasy world, our buddies are on the job as our Fashion Police.We would be fined if we wear bell bottoms with a T-shirt, which your mum toldyou to, to our graduation ceremony. With our friends, we could choose the appealing dress with stiletto boots which would look awesome in front of a crowd. You can save a major

fashion disaster.Friends are like peanut butter and jelly. They always stick together. Who else other than your best friend would help you walk to the infirmary when you brokea foot while playing basketball? We always stick together anywhere we go. One of us never follows. We walk side by side. We treat ourselves as equals. Alwaysbe humble and never brag on things that you own. One would never treat theother like leaves on the ground. Good friends are precious and rare like diamonds. Very hard to find. We should never cast our friends aside.

Friends are like angels without wings. Some may be devils in disguise. Exactly like the song Fly on The Wall by Miley Cyrus. The song tells about a personwhom you trusted and thought he was nice. Actually, he was betraying the onehe so called cared. We should never betray our friends secrets to the world of rumour-hungry people. As well as secrets, we shouldnt cancel our gettogetherat the last minute.Theres only a few minutes left until an exam starts. You realised that youhavent memorised the important facts yet. Who else other than your closestbuddy will sit next to you and repeat the words over and over again andhopefully remain in your brain for the next 60 minutes.A lot of people go through life with only a few friends. It seems that some haveless than that. They have no one they can call in good times or bad. There is noone with whom to bounce ideas around, or to talk about deep and troublingsubjects. They have no one to call in times of need or difficulty. They arestanding alone, being an outcast.When we are bored, we could SMS our friends with our fingers at the speed of lightning. Or even go to their house to catch up with the latest gossip. For mosttech-savvy people, they prefer going to chat rooms on the internet and interactwith people of different experiences. Besides chatting, we are able to joinnetworking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Friendster. On these sites, weare able to search for long-lost friends as well as new people. These ways wont make us lonely as we could interact with our friends in a different way.As

life goes on, we meet different people each time. Some turned out to be our buddies. Friends come and go. We lose some and gain a lot more. Some friends stay right by your side while others go the opposite way. Good or bad friends come and go. But theres one thing for sure, we cant live without them. Here is a poem on friends:A friend is someone we turn to When our spirits need a lift, A friend is someone we treasure For our friendship is a gift, A friend is someone who fills our lives With beauty, joy, and grace And makes the whole world we live in A better and happier place.With that, I thank you.