showing friendship

Since moving away from Australia, I've been thinking a lot about friendship. I've moved a lot in my life and made many friends along the way, but leaving a place is always hard. It makes being a friend to those you've left behind a difficult situation. When living in the same city as a friend I love being able to spend time with them, attend special occassions and basically just live life with them. This is, for obvious reasons, not possible when you don't live in the same city, let alone the same country. On my holidays in Aust, I would try to visit friends that I haven't seen in a while. It's part of keeping up with them, because I believe that friendships blossom when you can actually spend face-to-face time with someone. These days the internet has made it easier to keep in contact, but I think it's also decreasing our quality of friendship, but that's a story for another time.

Since living in NL, I've been trying to work out how to best be friends with people back in Aust. It's one thing to remember their birthday, when Facebook reminds you, yet I believe friendship is so much more than that. In the 9 months that I've been living here in NL, I've missed the weddings of about 6 couples that I've been good friends with. And it's almost killed me. Such an important milestone in their lives, and I couldn't be there with them to celebrate. So I've been wondering how to be a friend from afar. Is it enough to have Facebook chats once in a while, or send letters/emails/cards? Is a phone call or a Skype chat enough?

I'd love your thoughts and ideas on the subject. Is there something that you do to stay in touch with friends, or some way that you show them that you're thinking of them when you can't be with them?