To my dearest Kelly

(WARNING: THIS IS A VERY LONG POST. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO READ IT IF YOU'RE A WUSSY WHO CANNOT TAKE LONG POSTS. YOU CAN TRY TO FINISH THIS POST, BUT IF YOU STOP HALFWAY, YOU'RE STILL A WUSSY. SO WHY START? [ok, I'm trying to make you read it...])

Haha... don't be jealous lah, Kelly.

Just that I've not been mentioning you in my blog doesn't mean that I never think about you leh. It's just that you're in philly having a whale of a time while I'm stuck in Singapore - there's not much interaction to generate anything interesting lah.

I shall reiterate your position here in my heart and a bit of our personal history, ok? Come come, sayang sayang...
All about Kelly:
Kelly's my bestest friend since primary school (I knew Kelly since primary 1~~1988~~!)
(We would wear the same underwear if we could, but our size's just too different... :p)

Ok, THIS PICTURE IS SO GAY...

PRIMARY SCHOOL:
I still remember when all of us in class would borrow his colour pencils (he had one of those Colleen 30-pen/60-colour mega-variery colour pencils) which he lends jovially.. He's the head prefect of WPS and he has been super tall since birth (we contrast a lot, yes.) and we always make fun of him and Qingyi (the also super tall head prefectress who is also his neighbour.) I think Kelly still has a photo of us taken during our childhood. It's a super nice but humiliating one. It showed me as a short, undergrowing (and still undergrown now) boy next to another goony-looking boy who was 1 head taller. Hmmm...

There were many many days after school when I would go to his house in Braddell View and play with him. I shall not boast about his mega tower racks of game collections for him, but they deserve a mention.... Anyway, his house is like a mini funworld, complete with all kinds of gaming consoles, and 2 computers~! That was during a period of time when 2 computers in a house, side by side, was unheard of~! And I love his Transformers. Esp. Victory Leo and Star Sabre. Haha... those were the days.

And yes, the days of ping pongs at the clubhouse, when he would annoy me with his fancy schmancy moves which completely fail to astound me but made me think him an innovative goo goo doll. At least he's innovative. Goony, but still innovative.

"Look at my super duper smash~!"

What about the times spent at the playground with ice cream treats after that? Haha... nice. Except for the fear of spiders and their annoying spider webs.

But amongst all these memories, one thing stood out most to tell that Kelly is my friend for life.

I stole from Kelly before. Yes I did. =| (Frank, you bad bad boy...)

Kelly had limited access to the outside world then, as his maid always brings him home after school - but I was free as a lark to traverse playgrounds and play catching and buy those Dragonball Cards which were so popular then. I wasn't addicted to the DBZ cards, but I was quite mad over the Artist Cards. Quite quite mad.

Son Gyoku

Anyway, Kelly was quite quite mad over the DBZ cards (he has a sizeable collection!), and there were times he bought them through me. Like pay me $5/$10 dollars to buy them. But there was one time when greed overtook me and I kept one of those much prized shiny gold cards.

Kelly found out. But he never got angry with me. He simply asked me why I did it, and it made me feel all the more guilty because I could feel that he was hurt by my actions because I was a very close friend to him. Not angry, but hurt. Not retaliative, but simply asking, 'Why?'

That's a kind of love I've never seen before, and it was then that I thought to myself.. "Rongkang you shithead. This is a friend in the truest sense that you will never come across again in your life. Treasure him."

From then on, even though he can be a pain in the ass sometimes with his idiosyncracies and I do get really really annoyed by him occassionally, I know that I am stuck with him forever. Sigh. What to do? Best friend mah...

And to end off this primary school chapter, I must tell everyone that Kelly can't spell for nuts. Horrigible. He can't even spell if you gave him dictionary.com to reference. :p

But he has good handwriting, so it's a redeeming grace.

Kelly can't spell for nuts

SECONDARY SCHOOL:
Ah... secondary school in RI. Yes. Yes. Yes.

I lost contact with the bugger for a while, immersed in playing catch up with schoolwork, surviving softball training, and trying to be a good librarian (like my bro!)

Then in Sec 3, I quitted softball and joined RI02 Scouts (where Kelly's in) - thus began a new chapter of our friendship.

Going through thick and thin and making a few more close friends between us (TCWITB, for one), we perservered through our Venture years and GC years, leading our scout group through a period of total chaotic anarchism filled with question marks and no answers except for stupid ones. We tried for the President's Scout Award together, but all save me was axed by the SRIC.

Now this is the point where I'm supposed to go 'nally nally boo boo' to them, but I must also reflect that I was the first President's Scout to have 'almost failed because of the final interview' (as admonished by Edmond Tan, our great abominable VSL.)

Yeah, it was fun.

JC times
None available. Kelly chose the alternative path of going Ngee Ann Poly and excelled there with Yusry. But hey, GC years were still on in JC 1, and I saw enough of the Man.

Army times
Can't remember clearly, but I think this is the period me and chee wee and kelly integrated with Kelly's friends over in poly...

Uni times to now
Yup, I see him around school frequently, and have taken 'Principles of Marketing' with him. He's a real good marketing genius, I tell you (though I got A+ and he didn't! nally nally boo boo~~! :p)
But he's the more driven ass, and he's now in philly doing his NOC.

Oh yah, we recently also went for the N.E.X.T Challenge together (with Chee wee and ivan and joey) and got 4th prize! Woo hoo~! N.E.X.T


In essence, Kelly, the friendship between us is unbreakable lah, no matter how sick we are of each other (urgh, puke).

Our friendship is like Gravity - it's all around us and transcends over time and space. And it's the greatest force when summed together!