Since the formation of the forum in 2003, an annual gathering has been organized by the class of 65 in North America. This year, rhapsody 2007 was held in Sidney-by-the-Sea in Victoria from the 5th to 8th in October. Francis Ho (賀燁樑) took over the reign from Edwin Tse who organized the rhapsody 2006 in Ste-Agathe-des-Monts in the Laurentians.
22 participants stayed at the Cedarwood Resort for the duration of the event; and a total of 32 attended the home-made dinner inside a trailer home on Saturday night. Our iron chef, Lily Fung, sister of John Fung, mastered the prime rib au jus; salmon en croute; linguini aux crevettes et champignons; salade des legumes; and topped with her specialty ginger-eggwhite-custard for dessert.
Francis prepared a list of 34 riddles for the Chinese names of participating classmates. It racked the brain of most and applauded when answer was revealed. He did not prepare one for himself; nonetheless, Raymond Lee made up this one “風吹蓮塘” for him.
After dinner and the riddles, we sang what we learned back in school and at camp fire. Stephen Lee & James Tong remembered the lyrics and Vincent Lee accompanied with his harmonica on the singing of the "Last Night", "Funiculi-Funicula", “Juanita” and the Chinese opera.
As a reunion goes, our class reunion looked back and set sight to the future. Looking back was not an exercise in recounting our achievements or glories; rather it was to open up and share with others our innermost secrets that were our humanity, our fragility and our vulnerabilities. We felt so much more intimate friendship because of our humility and our identification with one another’s humanity. We talked about ourselves being innocent sheep living in a world with wolves. Sheep, you may say, we liked to be in the company of other sheep.
Sunday night after supper, Vincent Lee walked back from his car to the trailer home. He and Francis looked up the clearing sky and saw the polar star, the big dipper, the Casseopea and other constellations so familiar to them from the scouting days, he thought of Tony, our late classmate. We used to do the same thing long time ago looking at the same stars arguing which was which. May our friendship be like the stars, constant and eternal, at least for the length of our lifetime! See you all, another day, another time.
Before we said farewell to each other, Bonbon Hu volunteered to organize rhapsody 2008 which has now been scheduled on board the Princess Diamond for an Alaskan cruise from the 13th to 20th September 2008 from Vancouver to Whittier, Alaska. Last, but not the least, Luke Lee composed the following afterwards - attend we could not; name tricks we know not; were we but aging vintage; ’65ers are quite a special lot.
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