cheam heng yip...

i guess it is pretty damn easy to figure out which one is me, since i am the 'fairest' among others ^_-... as stated on the top left of the pic (which i wrote when i was 7, and yes, my handwriting hasn't changed much ever since), this pic was taken during my first year in that school, class of 1 Merah @ Yi Hong (in Mandarin)... i still remember vividly on my first day of school, without knowing a single word of mandarin, or any other Chinese dialect, i bravefully stepped into the classroom... and in the late 80's ('89 to be exact), there aren't that many malays that send their children to chinese school... nobody approached me since none of them can speak malay fluently... i took a seat beside a boy, who then i get to know his name- cheam heng yip (seated on my left in the pic)... he knows a bit of bahasa, but sign language helped a lot... and since that day on, we were friends...

heng yip was a bright student... everybody likes him... the teachers, the students (especially the girls because he was kinda cute, a mix of young andy lau and the nasty edison chen)... he always get A's in exams, and he was also the head prefect... he helped me a lot in my studies... i was struggling for the first 3 months in that school since mandarin is not my mother tongue, and barely no one in my family knows chinese except for chi-sin (which means crazy in cantonese)... so whenever i have problems in finishing my homework, my father would send me to his house which is about 40km away to get his help...

after standard 6, both of us went for seperate ways... he got into chinese secondary school, while i went to mrsm... from then on, we only meet like once a year, during chinese new year... and each time, his mother would tell us to stand up straight side by side, to see who is taller...

then, on 2004, i got a call from my sister saying that heng yip had an accident... he died in a car crash... there were 4 people in that car, and he was sitting in the back... all 3 others got only minor injuries, but he got killed due to internal injuries... i guess that it is already written that death knocks earlier at his door, at a young age of 21 years old...

throughout the years after the accident, i have a few dreams about heng yip... muslims believe that if we have a dream of somebody who has already gone, we should offer some prayers to that person... i was not sure if this also covers for the non-muslims as well... but as my sister puts it, who knows, maybe he did get the hidayah from the Almighty before his death... there is nothing wrong in saying prayers to another human being, no matter what religion he believes in... so, to my dear friend, cheam heng yip... may god bless your soul and may you rest peacefully in the hereafter... amin...

CHEAM HENG YIP (R.I.P) 1983-2004