Confessions of a Cat-holic (147)

I didn't know about you, but I sometimes thought that this widely connected network of tycoons and elites on the east coast looked too glamorous, almost like a vanity fair. To be honest, it looked more like a 4 year long orgy to me. Well, as a matter of fact, it lasted more than that. It extended all the way after graduation, into their careers in finance and investment banking. I heard that many of these people swapped wives and husbands because they thought that this exclusive membership to a prestigious college or investment bank meant that they were survivors of the fittest. They were the clean hub, everyone else was dumb and dirty. Layman people should all deserve to die because their genes were worth nothing.

But were the tycoons really all eugenics?

I wondered what happened if one, just one, of these connected individuals had STDs or AIDS. Domino effect...

Therefore, Kelly's existence and company felt like a deep spring in the midst of a dessert. I felt that she was the exit for me amidst this Hong-Kong-students-on-the-east-coast orgy party. I was used to disappointment already. When I left my alma mater for a school in Central, I was disappointed. It was like moving from a fight factory for temporal peace, only to find out that I ended up in a mental asylum. Which was worse? I would not know but since I already changed school, I might as well just move on because there was no way of turning back. Then it was LPCUWC, which was literally an elite concentration camp. Finally, I reached America, the land of liberty where dreams could all come true. But I was in the middle of a big gigantic urban orgy party. Utopia where all the super rich connected or dystopia because it was 1984? Well, whichever way it was, things could be worse, I could only say to myself.

I enjoyed talking to Kelly a lot. I never felt that way with another person, oh, except my childhood best friend, Karen Lee. Kelly could be my best friend for life, I told myself. Kelly came to New York at the age of around 8, so she was fluent in Chinese. She grew up in Tianjin, which was just half an hour drive from my second home, Beijing. I didn't feel culturally different from her. But her English was equally good. She scored 1600 in her SAT. I thought that she was really smart, and smarter than me. I liked to hang out with smart girls, just like Karen. Karen, who had a master and bachelor in Chemistry at Cambridge on scholarship, was smarter than me too. And that was not the only thing I looked up to Kelly. Kelly had graduated from George Washington law school and worked at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer as its attorney in Hong Kong. Before law school, Kelly worked at Shearman and Sterling in Hong Kong as a paralegal before her JD.

Kelly was on free ride at Columbia, meaning that she wouldn't need to pay a penny for college. Same as her rival, Emily Zhu, who was also on free ride at Columbia. Emily was the polar opposite of Kelly. I could see why Kelly didn't like her. Emily grew up in Henan but she didn't have a trace of accents when she spoke. I heard her father was a local governor in Henan, and her mother alone moved to New Jersey with Emily for some unknown reasons. I always felt that something smelled fishy about Emily. Nevertheless, Emily was hardworking, determined and driven, but also competitive and aggressive. Emily graduated from Columbia Law and Columbia College and recently moved to London for a job at White and Case there.

Kelly and Emily were on free ride for college because their parents both worked for Columbia University. Kelly's parents were medical doctor and surgeon in China, and when they moved to Harlem New York, they worked in a biochemical lab at Columbia's medical school near where they lived. Emily's mother also worked in the very same lab. Emily and Kelly went to the same middle school and junior high. Kelly sometimes worked at her parents’ biochemical lab at the medical school after school to gain intern experience and patty cash for her expense. Apart from that, she was also part of the International Science and Engineering Fair representing her high school in competing in one of the most selective and competitive collegiate contests on a national level.

Kelly had smaller eyes than mine. I liked her fashion style. Her favorite brands were American Eagle, Aeropostale and sometimes Gap. We even swapped jackets and clothes every now and then because we had similar physiques. She had long straight hair, all the way up to her chest, while I only had my hair up to shoulder when I met her. I still thought that she looked very much alike with the Taiwanese actress, Big S, from Meteor Garden, even though she was not Taiwanese. But she didn't speak with a very thick northern Mandarin accent anyways. She could pass as a Taiwanese.