Yesterday, the restaurant received two customers whose faces I recognised. One was a famous actor-turned-DJ-host of chinese station YES93.3FM. The other was my Visual Basic lecturer who taught me more than three years ago.

The moment he (my lecturer, that is) stepped in and seated himself with his companion, I immediately recognised him because he looked exactly the same when I first saw him when I entered his Visual Basic classes.

I just had the problem of remembering his name.

The sight of him stirred my memories of the good old poly days. And the first person that came to my mind was QT.

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She was my friend, my companion and my partner in crime. We were together most of the time along with Edmund and KL. The four of us were a clique that sometimes had Liyu tagging along.

I still remember my first meeting and impression of QT. She came to school on the last day of the Mass Orientation Programme for the flag day. Clad in tight jeans, a white blouse and slippers, she struck me as a typical ah lian—a term which usually refers to a female hooligan (a better explanation can be found here)—and being me, I am a tad afraid of ah lians.

We went as a class to the city areas to collect donations. Somehow, the class split up and I found myself with QT and Liyu. I brought them over to Raffles Place which was near my ex-workplace, thinking that we could collect more from there. QT surprised me by being very enthusiastic in collecting donations from strangers. There was neither a tinge of embarrassment as she goes up towards the working professionals and requests for a donation for charity, nor were there any signs of dejection when her requests were (at times, cruelly) turned down.

When school started, we sat together, had our meals together, did assignments together, skipped classes together, studied together and went out together. As I spent more time with her, I found my first impression of her slipping away. She was far from being an ah lian. She, in fact, disliked ah lians and their ways.

I am surprised that QT and I ended up good friends during our first year in polytechnic. She was Chinese-speaking, girly, loved clothes and shopping, had a tall and handsome boyfriend and was everything that I was not. I was like a total opposite of her.

But we liked each other, and enjoyed one another’s company. We helped each other in times of need. And even though I left school while she struggled on with classes, we still kept in constant contact.

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I presented the bill for table 3—where my ex-lecturer sat—and waited while he signed on the receipt. Unable to contain myself, I asked him, “Excuse me sir, don’t mind me asking—” he had already turned a slight shade of red “—but do you happen to be a lecturer three years ago? At Singapore Poly? Teaching VB.net?”

He answered the affirmitive. Apparently, he had recognised me. No wonder he kept ducking his head whenever I served his table.

I shall not bore you with his current job (lecturer at Temasek Poly in School of Business) but as he left, we bade each other farewell and I started closing procedures.

While waiting for my train home, I began to send a text message each to QT, Edmund and KL, asking them if they remembered Mr. Ng, who taught us VB using examples like “Mary thinks she’s fat; John doesn’t think she’s fat”.

Then I boarded the train, sat down, and waited for their replies.