Ishi

I’m back.

My life in the past months hasn’t exactly been eventful. I was beginning to get sucked into this drum of mundane, weary work life. And I thought, what’s the point of writing stuff that’s not exactly good/happy/interesting? But I guess there are times that are simply worthy to note, however devastating.

Ishi left. It has been almost two months. I don’t think the pain will ever cease, it’s just the extent of it that gets diluted over time. Not that I think it’s fair to the dude…

I met him two weeks before he left. I dreamt of him doing something similar more than two weeks before he left. He started opening up before I had the uncanny dream. The foursome started the breakfast series before he started to open up more. He gave some warning signals before the foursome decided to take some action.

We first met each other in 2002 in CS. According to him, we were peeing in the toilet next to the lecture theatre. We looked at each other and said
“Eh you look familiar”
“Eh, you also look familiar”
After that it was just Yos, bear hugs, project collaborations, foursome…

Rosy, him and I worked together for radio, loved one another lots, then got to know Chiang, worked on BAV together, loved one another more, got together as Foursome, and bonded for life.

During one FOC, he was the OGL, Yunshuang was his partner and I was the SA for their group. He had loads of fun in his first camp. We were at Sentosa during the camp and he applied lots of sunblock on his face. Being the fair guy that he already is, he said “见鬼啦！” a la Jacky Wu. And we just went crazy shouting “见鬼啦！” cracking ourselves up silly.

There was one semester we were neighbours in hall 5. At times, he’d just stand outside his room and smoke. Of course I nagged when I saw him doing that. Then there was probably one time that he decided that he wanted to talk about his problems in my room. We rarely spent time in his room since he had a non-existent stranger as a roomie who segregated the room.

We went to Desaru together. Another one of my failed attempts at getting the foursome out on a trip. We drank a little, threw some darts, enjoyed an exclusive beach, lazed at the pool and he had to borrow my shorts. That was funny.

Today was his 49th day thingy. There was a lot of chanting going on at the temple. Very not his style. The monks had mikes but the one on the head monk wasn’t too good. It didn’t capture the voice too well and it sounded like the head monk’s chant kept skipping. Not that it mattered to me since I don’t think most of us there understood much of the chant. But at one point when the voice kept skipping, I could almost imagine Ishi shouting “WTF! His audio sucks!” Yeah, I’m quite sure you would say that. When I looked at Ishi’s brother from the back, I kept seeing images of Ishi. The way he used his right hand to flip his fringe to the left looked very much like what Ishi would do. And they do look alike too. At least from the position I was at, three-quarters left from behind.

Or maybe we’re just trying to hold on to some piece of Ishi that we can find. That I can find.

When I was heading there this morning, my ipod shuffled Corrine May’s Fly Away.

You can fly so high
Keep your gaze upon the sky
I’ll be praying every step along the way
Even though it breaks my heart to know we’ll be so far apart
I love you too much to make you stay
Baby fly away

I don’t see how anyone can be so generous. I still wish you’re around. You missed Chiang’s birthday celebration, you’ll miss mine and Rosy’s. What’s our theme for gifts this year? You never bought the gifts. It should be your turn this year.

We tried, Ishi Lau. Not enough? You wrote on my gift wrapper last year “Haha been really happy knowing you for so long since year 1… and many more years to come” It hasn’t been long Ishi Lau, and I do want my many more years.

I love you Ishi Lau and I hope you’re happy. Happier.


In hairy and unhairy situations, always.