Saturday, November 15, 2008
~ 11/15/2008 11:04:00 PM ~
Okay, okay, Project Work delayed my blog update. Now I am about to share two events. They will be in my memory, vivid as ever, forever. But when I read them, in form of blog, I find it extraordinarily appealing as well. And, oops, I almost forget, apologies for not updating the Danger of the Trump. I think I will resume to that task some other time. There are still plenty of things to manage until the end of this year.
All right, here we go. I feel as if I am taking a vial of memory and am about to pour it into the Pensive. Anyway, this is a piece of memory that happened two weeks ago.
It was still early. Six in the morning at most. I was not sure, because I was still in bed. But that friend of mine was already busy. He still had his last pile of belongings to put away. Maybe into his travel case, maybe literally “away” meaning “discard”. Qi Long had already got dressed and walking back and forth in the room. Everything else was as silent as the night, or what was left of it.
I stared at the ceiling and did not get up. I was pondering, and only got up after a while. This friend of mine was flying back to China. He was sent back. And I did not know what was the chance of seeing him again. All of us felt pity and distressed about it, because the sixteen of us had been together since 2005. Friendship is hard to break. Friends are hard to be separated.
Qi Long and I helped him to bring his cases down to the front yard of the hostel. Three of us bought some light breakfast from the vending machine in canteen. Qi Long paid for his. Most of the remaining sixteen had been in the Airport already, waiting, waiting.
The air of dawn was chilling. I was not cold only because I wore two layers of garments. One T-shirt and one short-sleeved shirt. If you have been in Victoria School, you would have known that there are bridges across the channel, connecting the school premises and the roads. I stood on the only bridge that was open and waited for Mr Ng to turn up. I looked around, the streets were still lit by lamps, and trees were shrouded by thin mist of November morning. At about ten to seven, Mr Ng’s car drove across the bridge and three of us were in soon after. This friend of mine was silent during the short journey to the Airport.
We reached our destination just when the dawn broke, and over the mobile, I arranged the rest of the people to meet us at Checkpoint 9 of Terminal 1. The girls were delighted to see him again, even though it will be seldom for us to meet him in the future. We surrounded him, and in seconds jammed the flow and the people who were queuing thought we had jumped the queue. Mr Ng had to use Chinese to explain to them the situation.
So we moved to a resting area beside the checkpoint. One of the girls suggested each of us to saying something to bless him. So we did. I had nothing much to say, since I had written them down on the first page of a Vocabulary book. He always wanted it. So I gave him. The same girl now suggested to sing a song before he took off. So the girls did. But the song never finished. It was cut short halfway, as that girl, who was always have a big smile, started weeping. I was shocked. But she simply did not care and cried and cried. So now the situation was that the girls started sobbing, this friend of mine, as well as the rest of we guys did not know what to do. We were just standing, as statues. Qi Long was the most silent of all, but I knew that his misery was kept deep inside.
Chang Cheng hurried to the crowd a bit later. He was overslept. A roommate, from the north-east of China. It was known as a rather freezing place in winter. My friend was pleased to see him.
Mr Ng soon came back, informing him that it was time to bid adios. Suddenly my throat felt tight. We followed him to the entrance of the Passport Control. For him, it was an entrance. For us, it was an exit, an exit from our world. Our eyes followed him to the Passport Control point. Waving. With concern. With sorrow. With pieces of wonderful memories in our minds…Truly, friends are hard to be separated, but friends remain friends even to be separated.
