Confessions of a Cat-holic (98)

Because Samantha Lam's Chinese name (林可兒) was embedded in the name of Miriam's song, my new friends insisted that I was dedicating the song in every karaoke session to mock her. Actually, if you flipped it upside down, it could sound like Regina George from Mean Girls trying to cuddle the hottest guy on campus in a way to make Cady Heron feel bad about herself. Because they had no real friends in real life and all they knew about Hong Kong was pathetically from tabloids and gossip magazines, they reckoned that Gigi Leung was a quintessential figure from a Catholic girls' school. Chances were they must have thought of me as the competitive and aggressive tall short-haired girl who would do anything to be popular and steal all the men's heart like a diva.

Now, while many claimed that I resembled Gigi look-wise, I would like to add that there was a fine line between competitiveness and vindictiveness. I was not particularly big hearted. I was not kind and nice at all, although I would try not to hurt others in a way to avoid any backlashes and bad karma. I had to say I was definitely vindictive. It was a tradition that ran in our alma mater. We were taught to seek revenge at all costs while victory, ranking, material successes, awards or accolades were secondary to us.

I knew what Samantha was thinking. It was said that Samantha liked Daryl and Daryl could have liked her too, like he said he liked a thousand other girls like Gigi from Maryknoll, Sharon, Serena and so on. Daryl was top 5-10% in networth in our school and he was a resident in Central mid-levels. So he was considered a good husband material for many of the girls from shanty towns like Shau Kei Wan who were desperate to marry rich by getting into a co-ed school.

Truth be told, the success stories of SPCCers wedded as high school sweethearts were close to minimal. And the funny thing was almost no rich kids fell in love with the Cinderellas from SPCC just because they happend to be good at studying. I would give you an example. There were some romantic love stories of rich men seeking love floating around in our school. Clairol was athletic, tall and pretty but she was not very interested in men. Nevertheless, that did not stop the upper circle from pursuing her romantically. Eugene Tang, the grandson of K. Wah Group, who owned a yacht and went to Babson college after quitting SPCC in F1, openly declared love for Clairol when they attended summer school in Switzerland together. He aggressively expressed his love for her by sending her flowers with a love letter. Clairol said that she rejected his love, despite the fact that they had known each other since grade 1. The only guy crush that I heard Clairol kind of mention was Douglus Wu.

Douglas was born in a doctor's family, with both him and his sister being admitted at Stanford University. His father was the best orthopedist in town, who specialized in Hallux Valgus. They lived in the upscale Shiu Fai Terrace in Hong Kong. Douglas spoke perfect English and so did his sister. Again, both of them left SPCC before I got in so I did not meet or get to know them through high school. Douglas left SPCC in F1 or F2 to attend Hotchkiss and his sister went to HKIS. They were both academically driven and talented with an impeccable track record. Douglas attended Harvard's School of Architecture after college and his sister got a second degree at the Department of Medicine at HKU to become a licensed dermatologist.

I only got to know Douglas and his sister through the annual Ivy League dinners because he was roughly in the same year as I got into Columbia. It was a small circle among the Ivy League graduates and prep school circle anyways. All in all, there could have been puppy love stories and romantic confessions here and there but it was all a rich man's game. Nevertheless, this mirage of a love paradise amongst this urban wonderland had kept thousands of applicants knocking the door of SPCC year after year. They said the desserts wouldn't kill them all out of thirst. The mirage could though.