Grace with some of her staff 🙂 don’t work too hard on your birthday kabatch!
Happy birthday (18th April) to a fondly remembered batchmate, Ms Grace Chua – Tan !
Grace represents some of the feel-good constants in our elementary / primary school life : early morning chill, getting rid of morning fuzzies, first period giggles, and cheery faces like Grace’s. I even remember marvelling at her immaculate notes and well-trimmed homework, and telling myself hmm, good in numbers and expert management of schoolwork, this one’s gonna be an accountant, big boss or bank manager.
Surprise, surprise, 25 years later Grace is a VP for one of the top three banks in the Philippines, in the heart of Chinatown.
I also noticed that whatever snacks were forcefed us in school, she never gained a pound or grew an inch sideways and remained fit as a fiddle. We’ll all be old and wrinkly before she gets fat, I mused.
Voila, it’s 2012 and her 1982 pics look like they were taken yesterday. If she had a daughter (and I’m guessing she does) they would look like clones of each other(kudos Grace). 🙂
Flush with this yet-unproven foreknowledge, I told myself with so much going for her, I doubt if she’ll remember me years from now.
In fact, I’m happy to be proven wrong, and say that Grace through the magic of Facebook, the warmth of Yahoo! and the sweet encounters of reunions, she remembers me well and treats me like it was, well, just two merienda periods ago, when we were all dizzy from the sugar rush of warm softdrinks and gummy muffins.
Well, at least two out of three ain’t bad.
Happy birthday Grace, thanks for always being a great kabatch, and thanks for the memories!
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