The summer's gone and all the roses falling*

2009-09-20 8:33 p.m.

“Kiss of Summer” (Scarlet Division), “Summertime (Porgy and Bess soundtrack), “Summer Loving” (Grease soundtrack) and there’s a host of so many other songs with the word summer in it or reference to that season. In this case, this entry is simply about outings during this summer.

First off, (and I’m not placing this first due to bias) were my meetings with Chih Hung. I’ve made a record number of meet ups with him this year—two movies and two meals. We reflected much on the years of studies, the race to our bachelor degrees, the pondering of our masters programmes, currents affairs and well life in general. These meetings as you may have gathered from the start of this site or from knowing me, are always one to one. No third party entry (oh this sounds like political economy), no common friend joining us, just a head on talk. There are of course several reasons why but it’s always nice to tlak/debate without much of a crowd.

Versus my first meeting with Cheryl where I regrettably dragged Alistair Chew along. Not that I’ve anything having him around, especially since he chose the venue—a rather expensive Japanese restaurant. I manage to learn about American eating habits from her in the first few minutes, but afterwards the conversation went deep into stuff on homosexuality and religion, something I did not plan on talking about. Half of the blame lay with Cheryl for starting off, but with a rather well versed in theology and philosophy teacher adding his input after each sentence, it was hard to stand my ground.

The conversation swung back to my side when I explained the intricacies of British university academia and postgraduate courses, but again it was hard to have a proper exchange with a elder educator adding quotes of a degree of wisdom here and there. The results was a rather bad choice of dish and little understanding of her school life, although much of that could be gathered from elsewhere. With a later flurry of msn conversations, I learnt a little more and made my own conclusions.

Third such meeting was with Melody (see old 2007 entries) who was dressed in a really nice purple dress. This swung back to a one to one talk and we exchange views on education institutions, places to visit in the UK and Europe, a smatter about finance and the current economic climate and books. It was very interesting to note her interest in modern, well World War Two era history and her introducing me to a fictional book relating to development. We both agreed that Borders wasn’t a well stoked book store and move to Kino where after a short “break” I introduced her to Mohammed Yunus and his theory of Grameen Banking. It was a great meet up not shrouded with interjections here and there.

Fourth such meeting was with Jennifer (who added her English name legally a while back) and again with the same common teacher. This time it wasn’t so bad, I made up a sizeable portion of the conversation and added my own input. However, I was really searching for much since I sort of knew her before that meeting.

Fifth meeting which I wished could had been slightly better (I won’t explain more) was Weige and Annabel. Sort of “let’s quickly meet up please” kind of meeting and it transpired in a rather reasonable Korean restaurant but an expensive iced tea drink in Coffee Bean. It was in the latter venue that I was lost in conversation (not due to language barriers) again.

Oh Well.

Oh a completely unrelated side note, I’ve been getting interesting vistors to my site. Once such is a seven minute plus view from Kornferry International (Singapore Branch). My my, how did an employee from a consultancy firm find this site? For another address that hit directly to a certain city near the US capital, I have a feeling I know who it is. All I’ll say: pot calling the kettle black.

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