Hazia’s Reflections

Above is a pic of our ‘perhimpunan haram’ in Penang last Friday that I’d managed to capture . LOL!

Frankly, I was more interested in the pre-reunion supper rather than the actual reunion dinner itself. Unstructured socialising works better for me.

When I saw the email on our alumnus mailing list on the guys planning a gathering without spouses and children – and the opposite sex alumnus were invited too - I took it as women were also encouraged to join. However, my ex-roommate later on said that she understood it as ‘men only, hopefully no women would turn up.’

After a quick pirated DVD’s shopping at the pasar malam in Batu Ferringgi, we arrived at Restoran Bedah, Jalan Gurney at 11pm. 45 minutes later, it looked as if she was right. Only 3 women turned up, all of us were singles. One was a GM with TV station, one was a project manager with a housing government agency (my ex-roommate) and the last one was me. At first, we chatted a bit with a few guys. More arrived. The group just got bigger and bigger. They connected several tables - L-shape, perhaps thinking that we were back at our school’s dining hall. LOL!

Before we knew it, they moved around to talk to each other and… finally, they abandoned the 3 of us at a table in the centre. Whoa! We didn’t come all the way, beyond our usual bedtime to chat to each other only, we could easily do that in KL. Or… we could adjourn to another enlightening spot on the island, females only.

One, two and three ex-classmates whom I greeted simply ignored me and moved on to talk to the other guys. ‘That’s it, I’m out of here’ I thought. I came close to actually getting up and leaving. The 2 things stopping me was the TV girl had just ordered her second glass of Nescafe and my ex-roommate who earlier on insisted on leaving early had asked that we wait a little longer. Well, we started to relax and before we knew it, embarked on an engaging, juicy conversation on each other’s hectic, high-flying lives. Who said singles are carefree, without problems and commitments? We did have a lot to catch up on and not to mention, many things in common. And suddenly, we forgot that the guys were there. LOL!

We chatted about others who weren’t there too. We realised that there were quite a number of weirdoes in our batch, or perhaps ‘eccentrics’ is a more appropriate word. That explains our non-judgmental ways when it comes to our old friends. A guy, a talented artist, is schizophrenic and slashed his wrists a few times. Another, a top student with disciplinary cases, claimed that his wife has followed a cult; he ran around naked with a keris at a resort and was sadly locked up in a cage at the hospital.

We then decided to take off. When the 3 of us got up, the guys did too. It seemed that only then, they remembered our presence and wanted to catch up with us. So, we paused to chat in small groups while standing up near our tables. Then, we adjourned to the parking lot and… stopped to chat again. Wow, this could last all night. It was past 1.30am when we left. The evening was a good warming up session for our big reunion the next day.

Look out for more reunion stories:)