His Words
For those who chose to major in Computer Engineering (CE) under the School of Computing (SoC) in National University of Singapore (NUS), you get to know who’s who in a pretty short time I guess. The yearly cohort is only about hundred people or so. Having joined SoC orientation activities prior to starting the semester, I got to know quite a couple of CE friends and have stuck to the same group as lessons began.
Shan was not one of them.
To be honest, I can’t remember when was the first time that I have noticed her existence. During a boring lecture perhaps. Or a restless canteen break between tutorials. Somehow, it didn’t dawn upon me to find out more about her. During that time, the most vivid image I have of Shan was that of her walking along the covered walkway from the SoC building to the bus-stop.
Seems like during every lecture without fail, she and XJ would be sitting together. I’ve always thought of them as the “two-girls” of computer engineering. Given that girls in computer engineering are a rare commodity, two is in fact a large percentage!
Days went by. We went about our daily lives, oblivious to the existence of each other. The semester was ending. Exams were looming. Mugging was boring.
On an otherwise perfectly ordinary day, I opened my Friendster’s inbox to read a seemingly innocent message. Little did I know, the love of my life was right there, waiting for my response.
I have to admit, the actual events were much less romantic. Nonetheless, it kick-started our relationship and gave us the chance to get to know one another before we went on our very first date.
Her Words
A Math Lecture. A Common Friend. A Common School. A Formula to Our Start.
It all started with a Math lecture and a common friend.
It happened on that day when my best buddy, XJ and I were in the Mathematics lecture hall with another of our common friend, V. We were just getting seated and getting ready for a boring lecture when V told us softly, “喂，前面有帅哥。”
Out of curiosity, XJ and I took a look at who was sitting in front of us. Turned out that the person in question was one of XJ’s orientation mate and both of us weren’t really impressed with what we have seen. Of course I told V, “Huh? 会meh? 比较像Ah Beng。”
And well, that was my first impression of Feng. 🙂
Since the batch of computer engineers in the School of Computing was quite small, I got to know some other engineers through XJ since they were her orientation mates. But for some weird reasons, Feng was not one of them. With the then-popular Friendster, I became friends with some of them. Since it was almost like a favourite past-time to actually surf another friend’s profile and look at all of his/her friends, I spotted Feng. Seeing that he was the Ah Beng that V mentioned, I clicked his profile out of curiosity.
That was when I spotted his class photo from St. Andrew’s Junior College, which was also my former junior college. It was always great to know someone from the same junior college knowing that majority of my friends were in the Nanyang Technological University (NTU). So that was when I sent out my first message to Feng.
From a message in Friendster to more messages in ICQ. Our friendship developed and then it was time for the First Meet-up. 🙂