Confessions of a Cat-holic (179)

I forgot if it was Bobby who first expressed interests in Joyce or the other way round. But I was certain that there was something between Joyce and Bobby from the way Bobby hinted to me. Bobby said that he didn't want to go after Joyce after finding out that Joyce was a smoker. Wow, I asked Bobby how was he sure that I was not a smoker? I could be a smoker too. Well, I started smoking after officially dating Eddie as a way to cut off officially from Bobby. It was a sign that I no longer was Bobby's girl, I was officially Eddie's. But I was not really a smoker. I just had half a cigarette a day, because I hated the smell of nicotine.

I didn't want to get involved with the Hong Kong students on campus. Joyce didn't really belong to the Hong Kong circle anyways. The only person she hang out with from Hong Kong was Ashleigh and I was guessing it was because they both refused to speak Cantonese. Ken Tang and Steven Leung were two homie guys who would bring a rice cooker on campus to cook. Then it was William Lai and Ben Li. Justin Chan was involved with a lawsuit because Claire sued him for rapes. The ironic thing was that Justin Chan came from a lawyer's family. The Hong Kong circle started off quite tight-knit but somehow we all had our issues and we stopped hanging out with each other. And time would tell that I was right in trying to avoid the Hong Kong cohort because I didn't want the history of that thriving Japanese camp of 32 men and one woman on Anatahan to happen on me. I was very cautious of that island mentality of the typical Hong Kong mind where you beat a handful of competitors to call yourself queen.

And I was right. It was a very competitive circle among the Hong Kong girls. So competitive that most of the Hong Kong girls in my year from Columbia were gone by now. You would see how rigorous it was to get into a school like Columbia. At least the medical schools of Hong Kong University and Chinese University of Hong Kong took about 400 students altogether, including JUPAS and non JUPAS every year. They were no doubt the top of the social pyramid, graduating with salaries envied by most in Hong Kong. But Ivy League took only a handful of Hong Kong students every year, something between 10-15 among each school. There were around 10 students from Hong Kong in my year at Columbia and half of them were women. Ashleigh Lau already died in her twenties due to cancer. She was by all means a desirable candidate for Columbia. She went to HKIS and grew up in a Christian family. I had seen her singing in the church choirs with her Christian friends. She even went out with a Korean guy called Bryan Lee. Ashleigh was good looking and elegant, speaking English like a native. I heard from those video clips in church that she came from a banker's family, which might have explained how she landed a competitive job at Prime Brokerage at Morgan Stanley New York after graduation.

Among these handful Hong Kong students, William Lai was perpetually blocked from applying jobs online through the monstertrak despite his American citizenship so he had to come to Hong Kong to start his accounting career at 8000 HKD a month. Victoria Kwan from International Christian School was sent to Alaska after graduating from Columbia and Columbia Law. Joyce was a comparative literature major and she obtained her masters from LSE. She even worked in Shanghai's McKinsey as a PR representative before working at Google's Singapore headquarter as an external relations executive. She was still functional at least. Then it was Ann Cheung, who was constantly an object of ridicule because of her looks. But Ann Cheung and I, together with Rosalia from St Mary's Canossian College, were the only ones who survived.

My freshman suitemate, Claire Tsui, worked in Goldman Sachs for ten years and eventually lost her speech and reasoning abilities as a result of neuronal loss and brain atrophy from Alzheimer's diseases. Alzheimer's diseases were not the only psychosomatic illnesses induced by chronic stress after a long period of burning out.