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Saturday, July 29, 2006 - 17:45 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

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4O: The Gathering

That's another week gone by. Hockey-court soccer at NUS on Saturday, which would have been absolutely capital had not all the courts with proper goalposts been taken. We used the wirefence poles instead, but it is just different to me. As expected, the boots helped my touch a little, and the quick onset of exhaustion hinted that I should start running a lot.

Managed to get quite a number of people for the soccer, important since quantity was the main obstacle to soccer vs basketball. The big 'un was scheduled for Wednesday, though. It all began in the morning, when I went back to camp again, to once again get a couple of signatures on my clearance form. Truly, my pink IC is testing my worthiness to possess it.

Then to City Hall at 12pm, where a select six who were freer than most picked out a gift for fone, who recently has gotten himself ensnared in martial bliss. We Guessed a watch would do nicely. Then we split, most going for KTV while tpk and I patronised a LAN shop. Considering my singing voice and (nonexistent) practical involvement in music, I would say I got the better part of that bargain.

We would have tried Medal of Honour, but the shop hadn't configured that game for Internet multiplayer. And it appears they shared CD keys for Warcraft III, so DotA on Battlenet was out too. Ended up with LAN Counterstrike, where I had most success with the Para on Iceworld. Seems my affinity with that big gun hasn't left me. Finally we started a Diablo II co-op game, Paladin and Sorceress, up to about character level six. It turns out that tpk supposedly has never played DII! Imagine that.

pxh and zy arrived in due time, and looked highly amused at our choice of timesink. At $2 an hour, it was cheaper than KTV anyhow, especially as we had scoffed some free tidbits during our brief sit-in. Checked out the bowling rates, then popped over to play pool on a more economic basis. I think we are all improving.

The Big Dinner at seven p.m. was a steamboat buffet at Marina South (Chong Pang 2-in-1 Barbeque and Buffet, thanks occ). Competition appears to be stiff, judging from two "ambushes" from representatives of rival establishments en route. By that time, I was hungry enough (by design) that I wouldn't have minded anything vaugely edible.

An overwhelming percentage of past 4Oceans made it there, 24 out of 34 from zy's MSN comment, which makes just over 70%, superb by Singaporean standards! Sadly/Thankfully none of our teachers accepted our invitations, though we had a two-thirds majority approval for asking them out. A couple even paid homage to our established boycott tradition, which while regrettable was oddly appropriate. It just wouldn't have been complete without some instigation.

And so began the feasting. Started off with a wad of rubbery beef that took up five minutes of hard chewing. It got better after that, as I went through an assortment of eggs (three to be exact), meat balls, black peppered chicken, mee, rice, prawns and even french fries.

Clearly the food wasn't the main attraction however. It was the rest of the guys, some of whom I haven't seen for years. To be honest, though, none of them have really changed, physically at least. More reliving old memories, foremost being a petition by edchong (details pending release in a reputable local newspaper). Anecdotes, many of them unprintable, were in free flow.

There were accounts of how half the class ended up outside the room for doing badly in Geog tests, on how sitting at the front brought bad health to one's innocent textbooks (employed by angry teachers to throw at the real offenders), on how even flying textbooks failed to alert engrossed talkers that something was wrong, on how two guys conspired to spontaneously poke a hole in another guy's waterbottle...

Or how about someone throwing stuff over the roof of a four storey structure, or the legendary fecal matter outside the computer lab during a camp, or on bluffing bridge-style with Tarot cards, or on how some of us seem to have more rights to sleep in class than others...

Aye, the good ol' days.

We then met up with our old form teacher at the Lido, some in a convoy of cars (quite a few of us not only have driving licences, but automobile access!), and the leftovers by MRT. She still remembered most of our names, a remarkable feat (although the Chinese translations were something of a problem). Someone pulled out a pack of cards. Some things don't change.

Applied some motion blur to make faces less recognizable, easy to tell for those in the know, who should really view the full collection by jysw on Yahoo Groups:


All say cheese!

Except smk going "gilbert!", yah.

So when will we see each other again? Hopefully, it will not be as in the extremely poignant words of tpk, who in a moment of bardic melancholy waxed lyrical, "Empty chairs at empty tables, where my friends will meet no more..."



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