Dear Serene Liew Suet Li

On Tuesday evening 5pm-ish right after college, I fetched Andy, Esther, and RB to KLIA (I took long enough to blog about this, was so caught up in the ever piling assignments, upcoming tests, HS updates, and DotA wtf). We were the latest to arrive, after about three separate cars containing our other ex-high school friends (Joe and Kai Tzin arrived on their own, while Jon picked up the others).

The airport reeked of an odour that lingered – it was the familiar smell of the impossibly whitewash-clean KLIA airport, one of the few departure and arrival points of the country, the only zone where hellos and goodbyes are rapidly traded every possible second. Having been only to very few airports (Asian ones at that), I have to say in comparison Cambodia’s Siem Reap International Airport was deathly quiet like a graveyard, and Vietnam’s airport in Hanoi was.. well, nothing like KLIA’s. And LCCTs in both KLIA and Siem Reap are shitty, but Siem Reap’s was the worse (no aircon wtf).

My own camera was left inside my car and was too lazy to run back all the way to the parking lot to fetch it. :( So here are some photos from Jon’s K800i:

Look at Esther’s priceless expression wtf.

Being chummy.

The final blur group pic – all smiles.

Right after that picture was taken it was all tears wtf (from the girls at least). Funny how we were smiling and laughing like it was just another gathering but it happened to be at the airport.

Even more final pic of Suet leaving at the customs. We kept following her by the windows wtf.

And that was our goodbye. (Later on we went to Asia Cafe for dinner and the guys played 3v3 private DotA game for 3 hours WTF until 1am.)

Oh and we prepared a nifty scrapbook containing a condensed recollection of memories of us (basically Jess did all the hard work) – including letters and photos and farewell words from the rest of us. An exact reproduction of my letter was as follows (don’t mind the piss-ass poor, kindergarten-worthy Chinese):

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Dear Serene Liew Suet Li,

This is a letter not of a farewell nature, but to gently remind you in the future to remember our existence. All of us have sure gone a long way to arrive at this stage – so many “what ifs” to consider, particularly what if my appeal to be transferred to SMK USJ 13 had gone through? Wouldn’t all of us be standing in a different plane in time? Would I have started smoking, peer-pressured into participating in gangs? Would we have met each other through IU days?

It seems that all of us inter-connect with one another, and it’s something I’ve been quite fascinated at. This “u8 gang” with its members of varying personalities and capabilities that somehow seem to get along well: you, queen of thriftiness, an extremely sociable person, the ‘hot’ blogger on the Net; Jessica, whose transformation we witnessed from a shy, semi-introvert to a blooming lady with a sharp tongue; Esther, who used to have crushes on just about anyone and is one of our resident chatterboxes; Shawn, whose food we love, whose jokes we laughed at, whose girth we don’t admire; and the list goes on.

You will be the first among our u8 gang to leave Malaysia to study overseas, and that’s a remarkable achievement – with a scholarship (partial or not) notwithstanding. I admire the fact that you don’t follow our conventional after SPM paths – what with the numerous jobs you had. (Well OK you did A-Levels partially, but how often would someone back out studying halfway and then fly to the US the next few months?)

Berada di negara asing pasti suatu pengalaman yang tak dapat dilupakan, apalagi belajar di sana, hidup berdikari, berkenalan dengan ramai kawan lagi. Kamu tak seharusnya memikirkan kami selalu – semasa bangun dari tidur mahupun semasa bersiar-siar di taman waktu musim luruh (apa bersetubuh (wtf)) – tapi letaklah kami di hujung pemikiranmu sekali-sekala.

Kamu pasti hairan kan, mengapa aku kan bazir berjam-jam tulis surat ini dalam pelbagai bahasa. Tujuannya bukan menunjukkan kehebatan aku dalam sederet bahasa (cewah, aku bukannya fasih pun), tapi supaya kamu akan ingat surat aku yang agak unik ini.

别怕如果你真的忘了我们。 如果有一天我们的事情你还不记得，我们不会骂你。我们知道，人在国外可能忘一点自己的朋友，因为新的朋友太多了。我们的时区也不同，很难要安排一个合适的时间给你MSN或者webcam。

你还可以读中文吗？不要浪费你的几块钱跟李老师学习!自己要多复习和练习！你不能读一点字也别怕，我要造一个中文句子要查很多次的词典。

この手紙が君の餞だよ。好きでしょう。

楽しんで。僕たちのことを忘れるよ。気おつけて。

君の友、

[insert my signature signature (clever pun wtf)]