Confessions of a Cat-holic (159)

I was rather impressed by the glam of Jason's birthday party, honestly speaking. And the saddest part of it all was that I was not invited, as one of his juniors at Columbia. Bosco was there. Natalie Ie, Jason's suite mate from Tafts, was there. Karen Tsui, the chairperson of SOC, was there. But I was not there. I could only check out the pictures of the party on the internet.

Back then, there was still no Facebook. We were using xanga, but Jason didn't really update it regularly. There was a thing that was said to be the precursor of Facebook, made and created by our SEAS student, Adam Goldberg, who was also the president of the Engineering Student Council for class of 2006. This thing was called SEAS community, which was meant to be an online community platform that connected all of the students on campus, specifically those who belonged to SEAS.

I checked out every picture that Jason posted meticulously. It was not just a glance and I found a guy who looked stunningly hot among Jason's tycoon friends and he didn't look like the rest of them. Jason was particularly close with this guy, because he appeared in many of his pictures next to Jason. This hot guy looked a bit drunk because he looked a bit red and tipsy. He looked confident, with sexy vibes and he knew about it.

Later I found out that his name was Edward Hahn. He looked Korean, and was Jason's very good friend because they lived on the same floor in separate singles during their freshman year. He made a big impression on me, I had to admit. He didn't look like an outsider to me. He didn't seem clueless that he was in a party among all the super rich in Hong Kong. To me, that was very important.

At least he was way better than Jonathan Lung, my teaching assistant a year above me at SEAS as well. Jonathan Lung was that guy who repeatedly said he wanted to be a kung fu star just because he was part of the lion dance team. He couldn't speak a word of Cantonese but he believed he had all the connections he needed to succeed in Asia, a third world continent in his eyes, just because his dad grew up in a slum in Kwun Tong in the 60s. I was quite fed up with those Asian Americans who knew nothing about Hong Kong, except for Donnie Yen or Jackie Chan. Hello, wake up?

But Eddie was different. He knew who's who in Asia, and specifically Hong Kong. We were not a port with white washed prostitutes in the red light district waiting to serve the marine navy army from America. We were not Venezuela of Asia where all the men did martial arts and the girls could only compete for beauty pageants to earn a decent living. I needed someone who had a reality check about Hong Kong.

And the most important thing was that he didn't look gay, unlike many of the metrosexual guys I knew in the elite circle. What a girl truly wanted, at least for me, was just a normal guy, not someone with albino, blood cancer, leukemia or lymphatic diseases, and preferably not a cripple either. He didn't need to have a 4.0 GPA, he didn't have to go to an Ivy League, and he didn't need to be an investment banker. But he shouldn't have over 1000 sex partners. If he was sexy and hot, that would be a bonus. But many guys didn't seem to see that. A girl would not fall for a guy just because he was academically talented from a prestigious school.

Was it love at first sight between Eddie and me? I wouldn't like to think so. He looked hot and all that, but that wouldn't suffice. All I could say was that he made me curious about him right from the beginning, because he was the only non-Hong Konger at Jason's birthday party and he still shined like a diamond amidst the super rich.

I quickly requested to be Edward's friend on SEAS community. I couldn't see his photos at all there. But he happened to appear in most of Jason's party pictures. He used a sports car for his profile picture and his online nickname was ehahn212. Okay, now I knew something about him. He was a New York native, possible from Manhattan and he was Korean. Not only that, he should be quite wealthy.