Buffet Lunch at Penang Cititel

It was great and auspicious to start the new year, 2010 with a grand feast, especially with those ‘young girls and boys’ of the sixties. It was heart warming to see my dear friends, especially the ‘girls’, with an excellent appetite eating like ‘a hungry tiger swallowing a helpless goat’[饿虎吞羊] to welcome the upcoming lunar year of the Golden Tiger. Some were totally lost in the conversation that they had completely forgotten about the food on the table.

I was in a joyous mood,however, I did not say much. I remained as introvert as the time I was during my schooldays and I also did not feel like eating. It was no wonder that I was told by our 'Black Beauty' during the buffet lunch that she was not aware I was in her class in those days. Shirley jokingly commented that I could not eat and might later not able to sleep a wink because of the "beautiful girls". She could be right.

The buffet lunch was held at Cititel Hotel in Penang Island on January 16, 2010, with sixteen people in attendance; Mr. Ng Huang Leng was the only teacher invited. The thought of having a gathering sprouted when our former classmate, Kee Siew Gek, who came back from Sydney,Australia, for a short visit to her mother on January 15, 2010. Incidentally, this date coincided with the arrival of another classmate of ours, Lim Seng Kwang, who came back from Kota Kinabalu for holidays. The plan for the meeting was done a month ago through email. In the end, all of us decided to have a buffet lunch at a hotel in Penang. Phaik Hooi was instrumental in the booking of the venue. It was learnt that Penang Cititel Hotel was the only hotel in the Island offering fifty percent discount of its buffet lunch to the senior citizens.

At the luncheon many new faces had emerged after more than forty years of seperation.We did not see one another over the years even though we were residing in the same state of Penang, or within the same country of Malaysia. For instance, I have not met those classmates from Bukit Pancur who were in the same class with me in the Remove Class and Form One A in the Methodist Secondary School of Nibong Tebal. These classmates of mine are staying in the same state as me in Penang with Teoh Phaik Lian and Tan Siew Choo residing in Penang Island while Loh Meng Kiang is staying at Nibong Tebal.

Meng Kiang was especially overjoyed with this meeting that he even arranged some other programmes for Seng Kwang days after the buffet lunch was over. Seng Kwang and I were invited on the subsequent Wednesday to have seafood feast, Thai traditional massage and sauna in Bukit Tambun. In the evening we met some other classmates including Tan Way Joo in Sungai Bakap to savour Teochew porridge. Three days later, Meng Kiang arranged for us to go to Taiping in the evening to touch the wild boars hoping that all of us would have the ‘Lucky Strike’. One classic saying from our dear friend, Meng Kiang, was that "A successful person is one who not only makes himself happy, but also all those around him happy too." In a way he is considered ‘successful’ as we were 'very happy' to be the beneficiaries of his generosity.

It is also worth mentioning that Hooi Su Hung and Teh Kim Gaik came all the way from Kuala Lumpur.Unlike some other classmates who were indifferent to the emails sent out to them, they took all the trouble in terms of time and money to take a bus straight to Penang and then travel back home after the lunch was over.
'Time seems to have stood still, or to have forgotten our dear friend, Bro.Khor Hoe Soon' as he still looks like a young man in his late twenties. In order not to embarrass myself, I tried not to sit beside him or stand next to him as he would make me look more like his father than his ex-classmate. The lunch was supposed to end at 3.00 pm. Amidst the chat and jokes,we lost track of time and it was well past three that we realised the time. Seeing that all the other guests had already left the restaurant, we had to bide farewell to one another hoping we would meet again at some other time in the near future.














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