last week some of my former mia classmates decided to meet up and
it was quite a good turn out. some i hadn’t seen since art school in ’83!
we had a great time of reminiscing and exchanging tales.
i guess when one reaches the late forties and early fifties, gatherings
with old friends are something to look forward to and cherish.
it’s good to see the individuals and how life has shaped them after all
these years. yet, i could tell that their inherent character and
personality remained intact.
there was christina, or as we fondly nicknamed her ‘ying char’ who
has dabbled at every imaginable field. from real estate to chinese
painting to massive cross stitching to selling jewellery in laos,
she now plans to do charity work in africa in the coming years!
plus she has a daughter who’s a multi-gold medal swimmer
destined for the uk olympics next year!
chris is ever the mother hen, calling and cajoling everyone to gather,
arranging for fantastic discounts on the beer even!then there’s chee,
now a white haired fine artist and rebel who’ll be having an exhibit
at an abandoned warehouse in penang this coming september.
his art style has somewhat evolved to twisted faces and
distorted features. “a masked political statement”, he retorts,
lamenting about how his art isn’t for everyone.kenneth tan, who has made his ambition out of talking, is a budding
writer and strategist. we used to call him ayam jan-tan after his ability
to literally ‘talk cock’. he was carrying a tummy and experiencing some
hair loss, which made everyone who saw him for the first time remark,
“eh you put on weight!”, not the most flattering of comments,
especially when you are in the late forties.(ok, it’s never a great
comment to begin with!)
i’ve known him since school and one of my most vivid memories was
of the time when i camped over at his home in tiong nam, helping him
draw and do visuals for his interview the next day!
today he’s the proud father of 4 beautiful girls and doing what he
does best. talk.

then there’s hock wah, now a successful amway double diamond.
i remember him as being a quiet, shy,  soft spoken lad back in art
school. now he’s single, balding and rolling in the moolah.
good for him! he also revealed his special side to us that night -
proudly flashing pictures of his beautiful garden on his 1phone.

siew kai, who’s always amiable, always ready to help and never
fails to raise a laugh. he’s like the glue that keeps us together.
he now stays at aman suria with his wife and 3 children -
3 silky terriers!

and of course there’s lok,(who couldn’t join us taht night)
whom i actually started out my working career with.
i remember riding pillion on his beat up motorbike to sentosa
cinema in section 17 to catch a rm1 flick! those days back
at union 45 we were know as ‘lok and loh’, visualisers extraordinaire!
but time has been tough on him, having gone thru(and currently
still entrapped in)a nasty marriage, he’s still the stubborn, always
hilarious lok i hung out with back then.the rest, well, they stayed
pretty much the same as i remember them 20 plus years ago.
a time when we were art students, enamored by the grand illusion
of the bright shiny diamond called advertising.
a time when we struggled with drawing figures, painting with
acrylics, developing photos in the dark room with lethal
chemicals. and i remember the dinners we had some weekends.
where we would share a common purpose and dream.now looking
back, i was the only one who actually am still in advertising in the
purest sense, others have moved on to related fields or even far
better ones. these were the people i identified with most, despite
having spent a little over a year with.
i have attended reunions by my former colleagues of big agencies
but never felt a stronger bond than with my faithful mia mates.

travelling this path into the fifties, it’s an uncertain journey -
people you know and family start to get frail,  fall ill or pass on.
a time where the ‘R’ word stalks in the shadows like a serial
killer awaiting to pounce on his next victim.
it’s not exactly the best time in one’s life. but still, this late
journey brings many comforting  moments like this unexpected
reunion and these are the times i cherish as i witness the
tenacity of my fellow comrades as they weather this great
big storm called life and emerge intact, some better off for
the experience.
here’s to many more gatherings to come!

i’ll drink to that! cheers!

a rather poignant and apt poem from keats that i came across:

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,
Before high piled books, in charactry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen’d grain;
When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love; — then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.