What's Up, Dopie?: Cedric & Simone

Finally, Ced and Simone have both gone back and work in Hong Kong. It's kinda sad, as they're my closest HK friends in Singapore. Good news is that they will pay occasional business trips back to Singapore and hopefully, I can get to see them from time to time. A little history about Ced and me: we met in the UK, I was in Birmingham and he was in Cambridge. We were never close back then. The only contact that we've had was on a "working level", as both of us were Presidents of the Chinese Society and Chinese Students' Society for our respective universities...think back, it was 1993/94...we didn't have any personal contacts after stepping down as presidents.

Funny enough, roughly one lunchtime in October 2002, when I was having lunch with a few MCS alumni, we bumped into each other in a lift and casually talking about myself moving down to Singapore in a few weeks time and himself working in Singapore, coming to Hong Kong on a business trip. I took his name card and promised to be in touch when I move down. From then, we have been very close and became very good friends. We even went to Bali together in April 2003...

Simone was Ced's colleague when I got to know her, but I suspected something was boiling in the pot. The suspicion came clear last year, when I know of their engagement party planned at the Hong Kong Peninsula in September 2005. It was only meant for a small group of close friends and Raymond and I were one of the guests! Time flies and now, both of them have found a job and relocated back in HK. They came back 2 weeks ago to settle some personal matters and stayed with us for a few days. It's a pity that I was very busy and tired from work and was not able to spend more time chit-chatting with them. But I am sure that Ced is a person whom I'll be in constant contact with...it's not easy to find a good friend...