Memory Lane

This was taken wa-a-ay back then.

I've totally forgotten about this photo, until Yi Xing posted it on Facebook. Who knew Facebook, in addition to its networking purposes, could qualify as a harbinger of long-lost memories?

My first winter break in the States, I decided to spend it with the Hwa cousins in on a trip to New York. After all those years of watching Dunhill Double ads on RTM, the ones with the glittery skylines and grinning yuppies strolling down Wall Street, I was pysched about seeing this lauded city of plenty in real life.

Aw shucks, how little I knew then.

Anyway, so here we are. Four Hwa cousins and me. Yi Jien managed to harangue some relatives into letting us bunk into their apartments, where we repaid their kindness by stinking up the house with homemade bak gua and burnt egg tarts. We visited Rockefeller Center, gaped at the high ceilings of Grand Central, ate ice cream at Battery Park. We wandered the streets of Chinatown in subzero temperatures, going crazy over little treats from the motherland and seeking $5 haircuts in illegal gambling parlours.

Yixing seemed devastated when she emerged with a haircut that made her look like a boy, but ah, I doubt if she won't mind having the same haircut today.

Fast forward to six years later.

Guy seated second from right, Jerng, graduated as a philosophy major and returned home to work in finance and social enterprise. He now bartends at Changkat Bukit Bintang. During the long , brutal winter nights, I used to swing by his room for edibles and conversation. We seldom talk now.

Girl in the center, Shi-Hsia, is doing a masters in biomedical sciences in Wisconsin. I read about her life, research, political musings and adventures in body modification on Facebook.

Far right, Yi Xing, is on a Erasmus Mundus program, focusing on gender studies while cavorting around Europe. Two years after the picture above was taken, I left for a study abroad program. When I returned, I realized I had missed so many of the changes in her life, I couldn't go beyond the friendly cordiality that now define our friendship. We do emails and facebook now.

Far left, Yi Jien, Yi Xing's brother and cousin to the other two. My first year at Bates, Yi Jien taught me the ropes of adjusting at Bates. Showed me how to do laundry, how to pick courses, how to swing dance. I used to joke about how if he got married before I did, I would start panicking.

Anyway, he did exactly that. I sent him a congratulatory note and apologized for not being able to be at his wedding in Seremban.

After Bates, Yi Jien went on to pursue a masters in theology. Last year, he went for a solo hike in the rugged, aching mountains of Montana.

He never returned.

When I first saw this photograph, I had a good chuckle at the floppy hairstyles and the silliness of hungry Malaysian kids unleashed in the city. And when I think about where we are now and what became of the dreams behind the smiles in the picture, I am reminded of the amazing capacity of the human heart to laugh and weep at the same time.