Hazia’s Reflections

‘Each person has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart and his friends can only read the title.’

~Virginia Woolf~

I attended an old friend’s wedding at a resort in Sunway a few months back. She was my senior at varsity, we were also colleagues during my first job in internal audit at a bank in 1996. Coincidentally, she married one of our ex-colleagues. Despite the years that passed by, I remembered him very well because he started work around a month or two after I did.

Back in time…

My first job was special in a way, I was a fresh graduate. I went in with an innocent mind and actually made real friends there, especially with the other fresh graduates. Everyday, a bunch of us would explore a different lunch venue with the cool senior staffs . It was like an expedition, miraculously, we always made it back to the office within 1 hour.

Though I hated my job, I mean auditing was absolutely dull and dry, I had a great time there. We went for sinful ice-cream buffet trips after work, competed in intra-departmental sports during the weekends and once in while, we also had karaoke sessions. It was a blast, I knew I would never find work mates like that bunch again, and I didn’t. Who ever said that auditors were boring?:p.

Familiar faces…

Going back to the occasion, it was a lavish Chinese wedding. I could see that it had been thoroughly planned, from the bride’s elegant yet simple dress to the beautifully wrapped chopsticks gifts. As I watched the guests entering the ballroom for the reception dinner, I realised that many faces looked familiar. My friend was a master at keeping in touch and she has managed to invite many of our ex- colleagues from the bank, most of whom I knew.

Halfway through the event, the bride and groom went around for the famous yamseng toast, starting of course with tables seated by friends. As I saw them fooling around together, I couldn’t help wondering what would have happened if I had stayed. I would have loved the company, remained close friends with them but I would still hate my job, a lot too.

Missing…

Suddenly, I felt like something, or rather someone, was missing. Yes, of course, the cute Chinese guy that I had a huge crush on. He was ambitious, aimed to be a milionaire like his Sabahan tycoon father before his 30th birthday. He was 26 then, 3 years older than I was. However, being close to his mother and not his father, he wanted to do it on his own. He basically invested strategically. He always talked about making money, lots and lots of it.

In the beginning, we went out quite often after work. He sometimes sent me home even though it was not on his way back. I couldn’t figure out exactly what his issues were. He used to have a Malay girlfriend when he was studying law in the UK. By some unexplainable reason (or maybe I just couldn’t remember), she ended up marrying his best friend, a Malay guy.

After final exams, he came back in a hurry because he couldn’t stand seeing the 2 of them together in the UK. He left his trunks of stuff behind and didn’t even bother to collect them. Only that I hope he didn’t initially saw me as a replacement. Anyway, last time I heard, he was still struggling. He was 35 then.

No regrets…

Hmm…come to think of it, it was soon after that I started losing interest in guys and moved on to focus on my career, for years too! Amazing isn’t it:)

Well, no worries, this is just one of my NO REGRETS flasbacks:D. Definitely no going back, hehe…