I think I got even closer to Soo Aun in the secondary school. I was poor in Maths. So, it's natural for me to ask Maths genius such as Soo Aun and "Nao Moh" (Brain Monster) for help. At the same time, Soo Aun was keen to improve his English. I got him into listening to English music at one period and we wrote to each other during school holidays. We hanged around outside the school quite often - I would visit his uncle's video shop to watch free videos. We cycled around Mahkota cinema area when he was staying with his uncle. I even cycled to his house with some friends from Kangar to Kuala Perlis (or did I take a bus?). We also played basketball together under the hot sun. We visited the Tae Kwon Do club a few times together - we were both keen in martial arts at one time.
In the upper secondary, he was one of my friends that knew a lot of my secrets :) I would say that he was one of my closest friends when I got promoted to Raya class in Form 4-5.
We somehow drifted apart during his university days and my college days. We still met once in a blue moon in K.L. but it was very rare. I still remember that I got annoyed with him for urging me to join Amway at one period that I lost my temper and told him off. I still feel bad about it today. I hope he'll forgive me for losing my temper that day.
The last time I communicated with Soo Aun was in Skype. We were discussing about some freelance job related to writing articles.
The day I received the bad news about his sickness from Eng Hong, I was reluctant to call him because I wanted him to rest more since I was told that he was very weak. I was in Penang then and I was arranging with some friends to pay him a visit next week. My sister also printed out an article about food that can help fighting cancer for me to pass to him. Unfortunately, the moment my sister handed me the articles, I received another SMS that he was already gone. At that moment, I really wished that it was an April Fool joke.
L.S.
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I got to know Soo Aun since 1979 when my family moved from Penang to Kuala Perlis. I was 9 and halfway doing my standard three in Penang and was then transferred to Sekolah Jenis Kebangsaan Khoon Aik, Kangar,Perlis. We went to the same school, took the same school bus, an early bird bus as mentioned by LS, arrived school when it was still dark. The reason we were that early was not we liked school that much but that was the only school bus available during that time, i can still remember the bus driver's nick name 'chang mau' in hokkien, lime grass in english. So I was one of the boys who knocked on LS's house before sun rise. Those days carried on till secondary school and in form 3 where we got rid of chang-mao when we got our first bike license.
After graduated from SMP, I totally lost contact with those SMP1988 folks until 2006, one day a guy whose voice I was still familiar with even didn't hear for a decade called me and asking my identity including primary school, secondary school data blah blah blah...and he was Soo Aun! In fact he called me from his office phone, our office phone indeed. The plot thicker, we were actually worked in the same company for more than 8 years but we didn't know that. We concluded that we both were too busy, too hard working. Well actually he was in PJ office and I am in Penang. That explain why we didn't aware of that until he got transferred to Penang in 2006/2007.
Couple times I took him around Penang few good places for good food, and he always mentioned he will bring his wife to try it out.
I can see he is a good family man, good husband and a good father. And of course good friend forever...
Boon Kheng
2 comments:
I got to know Soo Aun since 1979 when my family moved from Penang to Kuala Perlis. I was 9 and halfway doing my standard three in Penang and was then transferred to Sekolah Jenis Kebangsaan Khoon Aik, Kangar,Perlis. We went to the same school, took the same school bus, an early bird bus as mentioned by LS, arrived school when it was still dark. The reason we were that early was not we liked school that much but that was the only school bus available during that time, i can still remember the bus driver's nick name 'chang mau' in hokkien, lime grass in english. So I was one of the boys who knocked on LS's house before sun rise. Those days carried on till secondary school and in form 3 where we got rid of chang-mao when we got our first bike license. After graduated from SMP, I totally lost contact with those SMP1988 folks until 2006, one day a guy whose voice I was still familiar with even didn't hear for a decade called me and asking my identity including primary school, secondary school data blah blah blah...and he was Soo Aun! Infact he called me from his office phone, our office phone indeed. The plot thicker, we were actually worked in the same company for > 8 years but we didn't know that. We concluded that we both were too busy, too hard working. Well actually he was in PJ office and I am in Penang. That explain why we didn't aware of that until he got transferred to Penang in 2006/2007.
Couple times I took him around Penang few good places for good food, and he always mentioned he will bring his wife to try it out.
I can see he is a good family man, good husband and a good father. And of course good friend forever...
boonkheng
Boon Kheng, I hope you don't mind that I have transferred what you've written to join a part of the article I originally wrote. It's interesting for the rest to read about it instead of being hidden as a comment.
I still remember that Soo Aun called me one fine day in my office years ago after I had lost in touch of majority of our SMP friends as well. I had no idea how he got my number. I still remember a joke he told me when I asked about where he was working. He told me "hiu liao phak kat" (in Hokkien means "throw and tangle up). I didn't get what he was trying to say. Eventually, he told me it's HP - Hewlett Packard. I still call HP as "hiu liao phak kat" because of him.
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