"Old" friends
After a certain age, the term “old friend” is no longer a
joke. Although the white hairs have not taken over the entire helmet we call a head, wrinkles and creaky bones (some of them actually squeak when moved) easily
reveal that you have been on earth for more than just a couple of decades. Then
you think back to how long you’ve known certain friends and go “Oh Man! I’ve
known you for literally more than 200 years!!”
My good "old" friend (refer to the first paragraph) came
back for almost three weeks and we had a great time catching up over supper and drinks. I owe my slight tummy bulge (mainly filled with prata and teh-tarik) and dark-circles under my eyes to
him and the likely fact that unhealthy Indian food is not so readily available in
Canada. He brought his family along with him this time and his two little
daughters are just so adorable – it’s scary to think that the next time I see them,
they would probably be all grown up, maybe even married and they will have no
recollection whatsoever of “Uncle Chong” and how I patted them on their heads
and told them to “not grow up so fast”. Sigh, don’t you hate it when time flies
and even worse, you know ahead of time that it will fly and yet cannot do
anything about it? They don't have an app for that, yet.
Over the Chinese New Year period, some friends make the
annual (or bi-annual, tri-annual, quad-annual … you get the drift) trip back to
visit their families here. That serves as a great opportunity to catch up with
them and find out how things are – actually, with Facebook, Whatsapp and so on,
keeping in touch isn’t difficult, but sometimes you just want to be able
to sit across the prata-table, clink a mug of beer or just arm-wrestle.
It is amazing how when you meet up with a childhood friend
and sit down to talk, things just start right where they left off
last – even if it was almost five years ago. However, Chua seems to
have lost a large chunk of his brain which contained memories from his teen years –
it could be because he sat with a datacenter under his desk for several years - but
I forgive him. That gave me a chance to “rewrite” his history and make me seem
like the fantastic friend I was who saved his life, introduced him to his first
girlfriend and loaned him a million bucks, which I readily wrote-off in the
name of friendship.
Anyway bro, you promised to come back in 2016. You better
keep your word or I’ll, I’ll, er … I’ll think of something. Take care dude!