Hello Again 38 Years After "Eating Fishball"

Those who read this blog regularly will know that I joined the nostalgic blog yesterday.sg as a "Friend" or volunteer blogger. I blogged about this in an earlier post.

A few days ago, I received this surprise comment on my Mar 2005 post about my primary school days on yesterday.sg. (The same post is replicated in this blog here). The comment was as follows:

"Are you Mr Koo from Victoria Secondary School? I am your old pal Mr Ong."

You see, in that post, I mentioned about Mr Ong and his remark "Wah, you eat fishball again ah?" in reference to me biting on a piece of cotton gauze which looked like a fishball to Mr Ong. The cotton gauze was to stop the bleeding after I had a tooth extraction at the school dental clinic. Obviously Mr Ong came across my post and realised that I was refering to him.

I have since posted a reply (reproduced below) in my post in yesterday.sg:

"Hi Mr Ong. It was a really big pleasant surprise to hear from you. Now I believe it when they say that the Internet can help one rekindle old ties and find long lost friends. How true!

You are right, I am that guy. Wah, you still remember that I went to Victoria Sec Sch! Your memory surely rivals that of our classmate Mr Lam C M. Do you remember him?

Didn't expect you to say so little though. Well okay, you used to say one-liners to me in school like 'Wah, you eat fishball again ah?' Anyway, that was all I can remember. Haha.

BTW, forget (and forgive) what I said about knocking your teeth off ya. Because I believe that you are still of bigger size than me despite I having put on quite a lot of weight (and girth) since my primary school days.

Will be dropping you an email soon (by clicking on your name, I suppose). Meanwhile, cheers."

Yesterday I dropped Mr Ong an email:

"It has been a very long time. How are you getting on? I hope you are doing fine. (These are the somewhat mushy sentences I learnt in primary school for starting a letter that I have never used. But I feel that they are most appropriate for occasions like this.)

I treasure this opportunity to catch up with you for old times' sake. It was really thoughtful of you to have left your email address on yesterday.sg. Now I am dying to know how you discovered my post. Did you do a search and find it yourself? Or did you hear from someone that your name was mentioned in my post and decided to check it out yourself?

So please email or call me on [my handphone number] and spare me the agony soon."

It has been a long 38 years since I last saw Mr Ong in Pr 6 and it seems like eternity. I still remember how he looked like - rosy cheeks, tall and quite handsome. I wonder how he looks like now.

So far Mr Ong has yet to reply to my email. Although I have the patience to wait, I hope that I do not have to wait for another 38 years. Because I probably will not live that long.

Update:

My handphone rang just now. I looked at the caller number display and it was unfamiliar. Could it be Mr Ong? My heart started racing as I answered the call excitedly.

It was Mr Ong indeed. We talked about the good old times and the classmates we remembered. He promised to scan our Pr 6 class photo and email it to me. (I couldn't find my copy. It's probably somewhere in my brother's house.) We vowed to meet up one day and reminisce some more.

Some details about Mr Ong which I found out during the 5-minute conversation - he has been a secondary school teacher for 26 years now, has one child and stays quite close to my estate in the eastern part of Singapore.

Mr Ong said that he was net surfing when he stumbled upon my post. He must be very surprised to find a Pr 6 classmate blogging about him when he was probably expecting his students' comments instead.

More updates will follow.