I'll Miss You, Old Friend.

Hello, people. It has been quite a turn of events lately.

First off, I'd just like to wish a belated Happy Birthday to Mr. Siow E Kent! :)

Yeah, that's the birthday card you gave me. I still kept it, after all these years. :')

Never realized you were so handsome.

Ladies and gentlemen, the handsome young man you see above is Siow E Kent. He was born on the 28th of March, and as his brother E Guy said, he was very very cute.

He got to touch a white tiger.

I've known E Kent for 9 years, going on 10. We met way back in primary school, and we sat together for around... 3 years, I think? It was Standard 2, 3 and 4, if my memory doesn't fail me.

During those 3 years, he was incredible, a great friend. I remember his English was one of the best of our class. We wrote a short vampire story together. It was handwritten. But one day I asked him whether he still had it, and he told me he'd thrown it away. I was pretty upset then.

I remember there was once, we wanted to make a movie, he and I were both fighting for the post of director, but he was so stubborn, so I had to settle for the post of producer. Needless to say the movie was a failure cause we were just kids.

Because we also took the same transport to and from school, we'd become pretty close. We used to hang out after school, because our transport aunty had to do 2 rounds to fit everyone, and we were the in the 2nd round.

Besides being a great friend, E Kent was also incredibly strong, not just physically but mentally too. In 1 of those 3 years, he knocked the corner of a desk. The area he knocked was the sensitive area behind 1 of his ears. He cried, of course. He was just a kid, anyone would have cried. It must have been bloody painful. I looked at it and it was a deep, deep gash. He went back home, and came back the next day, smiling and cheerful. It was as if he was good as new. There was some sort of purple glue on the wound.

Another demonstration of his strength was in Form 2. I blogged about it before, you can read it here. And this photo, is what happened afterward. :)

A stupid monkey banged his head yesterday, and the monkey is ME! :D

In Standard 6, he said somethings that caused a misunderstanding on my part, and I think I took too personally. From then on, I've always regretted not making the effort to repair our friendship.

On February 5th 2010, we(the general population of everybody) found out that E Kent had lung cancer. And it was a shock. Who would have thought that E Kent, Sportsman of the Year, footballer, runner and all things healthy, would get cancer? He didn't even smoke for goodness' sakes.

Gradually the cancer got worse but he fought to the every end, long enough to celebrate his 16th birthday in hospital. Those of us who had Twitter were trying to trend #happybirthdaysiowekent, and it worked too, in Malaysia anyway.

2 days after his birthday, on the 30th of March 2011, E Kent passed away at 12 45 am. I couldn't believe it myself when JonC confirmed the news to me. Everyone was crying. I cried too, a lot, but at the funeral service, after we went to pay our last respects and the coffin was closed, God gave me peace.

I pray that your family finds that peace too, for their loss must be so much greater than ours.

I'll always miss you, friend, seat partner, co-author. Siow E Kent, 28th March 1995 - 30th March 2011, rest in peace.

Thank you for the memories.