許久以前的好朋友
作者在本文中描述一段過去的友誼。作者在美國唸書的時候，結識了一位來自新加坡的朋友，這段友誼很短暫不到兩年，卻對作者在以後的攻讀學位過程當中，產生關鍵性的影響。藉著這篇文章作者希望能夠為這段過去的友誼畫下完美的句點。
關鍵詞：友誼，情感，往事，消極，有人緣的

My Buddy of Long Ago
The author describes an old friendship in the essay. During his study in the U.S.A., the author struck a friendship with Lee from Singapore, which was brief, less than two years, but critical to the subsequent pursuit of his degree. The author wishes to bring a closure to the friendship with this essay.
KEYWORDS: friendship，bond，flashback，indolent，congenial

I met Lee at Purdue University in the summer of 1986. We were pursuing an engineering degree. Purdue is located in West Lafayette, IN, a typical Big Ten college town. There was not much to do except for sports. We played tennis together. I do not quite remember how we got acquainted. I do know we hooked up before school started. It was a blessing to have a tennis buddy in a new place.
Lee was chubby, always cheerful. If you ran across him, you might mistake him for a congenial and smooth talking businessman, never an engineer. I don’t say that lightly; he, with a smile and truly a strong personality, knew how to and when to cheer you up. He is a Singaporean and has a Chinese origin like mine. People liked to be around him. Indeed he was a magnet in a crowd and a friend with everybody. As I look back, he behaved more maturely than most of his peers; he appeared to be sophisticated, I figured. He ironed his own shirts and looked best in front of people. He enjoyed ruffling my feathers by doing things like straightening up my front hair, but it ticked me off. To calm me down, he quipped, “A tidy boy gets a girl’s’ attention.”
He drove a Toyota Supra, a sports car, with stick shift. I liked riding in his car and observing the way he shifted gears, so sleek and professionally. I commended his driving style. However, he told me it was Toyota that did all the tricks.
Because of Lee, I got to know a lot of folks with different backgrounds who came from all over the world to chase their dreams. We had so much to talk about because we had so much in common. We worried about the same things, financial aid, research progress, graduation, etc. Sometimes we took trips to Chicago for sightseeing and shopping for Asian foods. We picked on a certain date when a museum in Chicago was open to the public free of charge. During snowy days we enjoyed hot pots (fire woks) together and had a good time. Everyone had a story to tell. Some good and some not so good news. Triumphs and defeats tied us together. My problems at the time melted away after hearing of those from others.
He called me and invited me to study together. It was the sense of being needed and being helpful that kept the friendship going without a hiccup. I remember teaching Lee one on one in a gigantic classroom. Purdue was infamous for holding large freshman classes in those classrooms. I played professor and wrote all the formulae on the blackboard before the Ph.D. preliminary (written) examination. I tried to explain how to use each formula and related one to another. In a way Lee set a higher bar for me, pushed me to the limits, and tried to see where I called it quits. For example, Lee challenged me to reach at the final answer using a totally different set of formulae. I was challenged again and again and forced to look deeper at all the mathematical relationships and make more sense of them. Lee asked all the right questions; he did not feel confident answering them by himself. I achieved a tremendous sense of accomplishment beyond words. He needed me more than I needed him. He relied on me for help with his schoolwork. He was smart, but did not care to spend much time thinking. Even during times when he came up with his own answer, he asked me for assurance.
This story, as related by Lee, shed light on his good nature. Lee had rented a house with some other students. They, except for one student, had agreed to subscribe to a Chinese newspaper, delivered from overseas, with the understanding that they shared the cost. This was before the Internet Age and reading a newspaper from home was one of the few entertainment choices. Instead of continuing to persuade the lone dissenter, Lee had paid more than his share. He was accommodating and made everybody happy. He was the one who organized a moving team when one of us moved from one basement to another basement.
Every weekend Lee studied with me religiously in one of those empty classrooms. We preferred playing preacher in turn; however, I was often the one who stood on the podium. How nice it was to have a big blackboard all to myself. Sometimes I needed a clean blackboard to derive a theorem and Lee happily erased it for me. When I got tired, Lee would pick up my turn and continued the derivation. Usually it took Lee two or three trials, with my prodding, to finish the job. After such a long and tiresome drill, we heard our stomachs grumbling.
Lee volunteered to order a pizza from an independent, non-franchise pizza store to keep us going. Lee frowned on Pizza Hut and Domino's (Papa John's unheard of then). Only the Mom and Pop’s stores suited him. Lee sought out new pizza stores. Boy! We tasted every new pizza in town. Once in a while we ate KFC’s three wings and a biscuit at $1.31 (tax included) per order. That is no longer available from KFC's menu. On Sundays we went to Wendy's to have all you can eat chillis for brunch before we started. We only cared about saving, not indulging. In our minds, the number one goal was to pass the Ph.D. preliminary exam.
We thoroughly went thru problem after problem, derivation after derivation, and application after application. Just when I thought we were done and over with everything and when I felt I sure needed to hit the old sack, I got calls from Lee.
“Are you sleeping?” he asked apologetically.
“Yep!”
“Sorry to bother you this late. I still can not figure it out,” asked Lee.
“What?” I was not myself.
Then Lee pointed me to a proof he had difficulty with. I thumbed thru the pages and tried to gather myself.
“Haven’t we gone over this already?” I was ready to
dismiss his call and went back to sleep.
“Could you please run it by me again?” he pleaded.
In a moment like this, it really got me thinking, “Time to come up with another way to convince him.” With one hand on the phone and the other scribbling on a notebook, I managed to answer his question in a more intuitive and easy to understand manner. This happened more frequently with the Ph.D. exam. fast approaching. Lee’s adamant quest for a full understanding of subject materials was motivated by the unfailing truth that professors were extremely clever in filtering out those with only a minor deficiency in these types of exams.
Before I met him, I was not sure about if I was able to make it to my Ph.D. He somehow boosted my confidence. He asked me challenging questions repeatedly, which I took it as a compliment and which I worked hard at in order not to let him down. It's boring to study alone. But with Lee I looked forward to weekends because I felt I had a companion. From his questions I got offered an opportunity to take a second look at where ambiguous and unclear areas (or semi-clear areas as we jokingly referred to) were and put myself in his shoes to see what the best way to explain. I led him by the hand and we climbed the tall mountain together.
We both failed at the Ph.D. preliminary the first time. The reason was the exam questions were too clever, beyond our expectations. We spent much more time at the second trial and I made the move calling him to study. Unfortunately before he took the second stab, he took an easy way out and accepted a job offer in Bellevue, WA. I passed the second trial. I found out that the pursuit of higher learning was not all that bad as long as I kept on exercising my brain, kept me out of the box and in a creative sort of way, thanks to Lee.
I only received one letter from him six months after he left Purdue. After I graduated from Purdue and settled down, I got in touch with him with the telephone directory assistance. He was surprised to hear my voice. I told him I was going to Seattle for a business meeting. I asked him if it was possible to meet him somewhere in Seattle. I sensed this was something he did not take well. Moreover I felt like pulling a tooth from a tiger’s mouth. Reluctantly he mumbled, “O’ righty.”
I was expecting him at my hotel’s lobby anxiously, but he did not show up. Later I got a call from him saying he was sorry. It takes me a long time to forget about the whole deal. I feel amiss not being able to rekindle the friendship, bond, and connection with the past. Do I feel I was being used? I tend not to think that way. I was thankful. He came to my life during a critical part of my life. I do feel sad he chose not to meet me. I wonder whether I am a painful reminder. He knows since he is way from academics for so long, it is impossible to go back to school and get his Ph.D., a recognition he is yearning for after earning a world of money.
We had so much fun together. With Lee prodding me along, time flew. Lee gave me a lift and filled my ego to overflowing. I don’t want to see him any more. It is a flashback that haunts me occasionally. It does not matter that much anymore. This friendship was an odd ball and it lasted less than 2 years. I came out of it feeling more confident about myself. A lot of my classmates dropped out like flies simply because they did not persevere. I used to be passive and indolent. Lee changed me. Lee was eager for my companionship. I became more open and more eager to know people. This much I now believe, in my secluded, isolated, ostrich like old self, there would have been no way I was able to go through all the hoops, ordeals, and gruesome boredom and make it at the end had Lee not been around.