Gathering with my former schoolmates

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Today’s post is quite backdated. It was dated way back to the 4th day of Hari Raya this year. 

This is the story…

I have an active Whatsapp group of my former schoolmates. Not of the entire school but about 52 of us. There used to be more but some members left because the group is too noisy for their phone. They claimed that their battery drained quickly because of our never ending chats. We chat about anything under the sun. 

Our group is lively and fun because:

1) No showing off of how successful or rich you are. 

You know the reason I loathe going for gatherings sometimes is because people tend to show off how successful and rich they are today? Not in this group though. We dubbed our group as an encyclopedia as we have people of all walk of lives in it. We have doctors, lawyers, lecturers, architect, engineers, IT, marketeers, homemakers … anything, you name it, most probably we’ll have it somehow. Hey, we even have a blogger in there (which my friends playfully dubbed as ‘bugger’) but when chatting in our group, we are all just the former students of our school; nothing more, nothing less. 

It’s like we are transported back to school days except we are much older and wiser now yet still as wacky and crazy. 

2) Support group

Our group is the best support group there is. Whenever anyone of us needed help, we’ll just need to buzz the group and somehow help will be on our way. We have seen friends helping others to transport stuffs overseas and back. We have seen friends opening her home to other friends coming back to Msia from abroad for the holidays.

I, myself have been on the receiving end countless of times. They helped me with my boys’ education; helping with homeworks and giving ideas for Ethan’s school projects as well as offering help to execute it. When my kids were unwell and got admitted, they came to visit to cheer them up.

There are more to mention but you got what I meant, right? 

So now let me bring you back to my backdated Hari Raya story.

Our group consists of multiracial friends so it is only natural for us to make plans to visit each other during the festivities but it usually only happens during Chinese New Year when they are all back to their hometown in Sitiawan where we grew up. I never get to attend any of those as I am always either in Seremban or Melaka as my parents have shifted out of Sitiawan. 

One of our Malay friend has been inviting us over to her mom’s place for years yet nothing materialized out of it as her mom lives quite a distance from us (nearby KLIA). We all know her mother as she was also our teacher back then. Seeing that none of us ever appear at her mom’s place over the years, she stopped inviting us. 

However this year, one of our friend self-invited himself to her mom’s place and initiated a gathering in our group chat. She was obviously more than happy to welcome us. My problem was it falls on a week day when Darling had to work so he won’t be able to send me all the way there. My friend, the initiator carried through with the plan by volunteering to chauffeur us to our friend’s mom’s place. 

He picked me and the boys up at a mall. 

Picking up more passengers along the way. We spent the almost one hour journey catching up in person.

It feels nice to talk instead of chatting online for a change but one of my friend complained that I am much more silent in person compared to my online persona. I don’t know why he is complaining though as I have always been a very shy person, haven’t I? 

Finally after over two decades, we are reunited with our friend and her mom, our former teacher. It’s amazing how our teacher can still remember some of us. As a former teacher myself, I can only remember those extremely mischievous or the amazingly smart ones. I wonder which category I fall into… 

Another picture of my friends. It could have been a bigger group if it was a weekend as most of us needed to work but we are contented with this small group that day. 

Can you recognise a couple of hands here? I think it is very obvious who the smallest hand belongs to. 

Ethan was very polite, sitting quietly enjoying his meal.

Unlike Ayden who eats spaghetti using his hand! OMG! I don’t know where to hide my face… but then again, the malays usually eat rice using their hands so it should be okay to eat noodles with hands too… no? 

Pikachu was there for the gathering too. 

We had a great time catching up and almost immediately calls for another gathering this Deepavali. Let’s see if it will materialize. Do you still keep in touch with your former schoolmates?