花市

Went to the flower market of Victoria Park with Vivian in the evening of Chinese New Year Eve.

It has been 20 years since I was last here - when I went with FW, a friend from my secondary school. FW was one of the best boys in his class, and had a natural gift in dealing with numbers. He had, alas, a series of unfortunate happenings and was not doing so well in his School Cert and A level examinations. In that New Year Eve, as he told me, he was planning to go abroad - apparently Australia - to continue with his university study.

I lost touch with him for a few years, and he re-emerged as a junior trainee in a local accountant firm. That was the time when I graduated from medical school and we enjoyed happy dinner gatherings every now and then. He worked hard for the ACCA (or CPA ?) examination but never really got through, and I noted that he grumbled more and more about his colleagues setting plots against him.

He changed his job several times, and, as Hercule Poirot said (in the ABC Murder), he was the rolling stone, but gathered very little moss. Some years passed, and one day he told me that his company was about send him to the new office in India.

I did not hear from him for another several years. I had no idea where he'd been, and my life took its own pace. Some time later, I went for overseas training. A few months after I was back, he called me - rather unexpectedly.

(To be continued.)