Confessions of a Cat-holic (34)

My first day of school in SPCC was a bit awkward. I actually went to the wrong classroom. I would not know why. They made it clear to me that I was a student of 3E but I somehow stumbled my way into 3D instead. I even sat down for a while before I realized that I made a mistake. And so I finally stepped into 3E's classroom to find myself greeted by an unexpectedly warm, smiley and familiar face. She was Clairol Wu.

I found Clairol's hospitality a welcoming surprise. She said that she was expecting my arrival. I told her I was the new student in class and I just transferred from a school nearby. She told me that her mom went to my same school some thirty years ago. Surprisingly, her mother was also a transfer student at SPCC, where she met her husband. Her mother was Audrey Yu, a name which no hong konger would not have heard of. Without the need for me to introduce, she was often known as one of the most popular and famous politician-barrister in Hong Kong. Her father was one of the most reputable brain surgeons in town. Clairol had a very good profile, so I thought. Later I found out that they even owned a horse in Happy Valley Racecourse, which was just 5 minutes walk from their apartment in Broadwood Road.

Clairol was the only girl taller than me in class. All the other girls looked like hobbits from Lord of the Rings. She was one of the very few people whom I would acknowledge as "friends". The other girls in 3E liked to mock me by drawing comparisons of my background with the girl whom I replaced. Her name was Nicola Lai. She was Malaysian Chinese and she worked in a bank upon her graduation in LSE. Guess what, Nicola Lai's brother Christopher Lai also went to the same school with me at Columbia University. Small world not so small again.

There were a few girls in the class who always sticked together, making them look like five peas in a pod. It was Mindy Ho, Samantha Lam, Sibyl Mo, Monica Go and Rebecca Wai. They had all slept with my ex-boyfriend Edmond. All I could say was congratulations. I wished them all the best. I couldn't have asked for more.

Mindy went to HKU law, as a legacy to her mother's aspiration as a nurse at Sanitorium Hospital. She lived in Baguio Villa before moving to South Bay, just because I happened to introduce her to my biggest rival, Sharon, who also resided in Baguio Villa. I suspected that Mindy was a bit too sensitive about residences. I meant to put people with the same mindset together, you know, the "clean network". Mindy never ate out with us anymore after moving to South Bay because they were overleveraged in their purchase of the new apartment. Jane, Mindy, Rebecca, they were the biggest reasons why I kept running away for escape. By the way, Rebecca Wai was the daughter of head of admissions at HKU.

Samantha Lam, a resident from Shau Kei Wan, was a Silicon Valley miracle. After achieving 8As in the public exam, she chose to major in computer science at Chinese University. But the first job she got was in banking?! Allegedly, she only received 6000 HKD during her probation at Dah Sing Bank as a management trainee. She kept saying that I was a fan of Alaska when I was living in New York. She even compared me with the guy in the movie, "Into the Wild". I wondered what kind of people could succeed in a place as competitive as Google. She was showing off her US pay salary at Google when we both worked in Beijing in 2009. She even sold her flat in the city to move to Cheung Kwan O, so that she could support her husband's founding business, QF Pay. They were running a life against China's biggest tycoon, Ma Yun and his latest spinoff, Ant Financial.

Then it was Sibyl Mo who lived in a run-down apartment on Tin Hau Temple Road. Sibyl, together with her first love Keith Wong, was the biggest hillbilly I ever knew in Hong Kong. Hey, she was already among the richest 15% in SPCC with a residence in Fortress Hill. They obviously had a skewed and delusional perception about what being rich in Hong Kong was like, naively having a projection that everyone else lived in poverty slums if he attended schools outside of SPCC. People like Sibyl Mo and Keith Wong had a super inflated ego with the mentality that North Point people had it all. Wait a minute, I lived in Fortress Hill too. Why did I not end up a hillbilly?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdWRuFQZ8RI