Monday, November 11, 2019

2019-11-04 Dinner gathering, Joe in HK

Dear All,

We had a dinner gathering on 04 Nov 2019 in Restaurant VTC Tao Miao Institute in Fotan. At 7 pm, all nine of us present, NN, Joe, Siu Ling, Mona, Kakoo, Koon Tai, Tomson, Stephen, & Ralph . Joe came back from Canada againto play football competition. He did enjoy playing the matches with 1 win and 3 losses.
We got our table and soon the food came. The first one is a soup. Every one has a nice bowl with a lid. When opened the lid, a good strong smell came out. This soup is made with Panax notoginseng田七 & chicken. Koon Tai asked what is the function of the notoginseng and how it cost? NN said he cannot eat this soup. We know that NN has had heart disease, but not knowing why he cannot eat this soup. NN explained that his doctor told him not to eat notoginseng. We are surprised that his doctor is a western doctor but notoginseng is Chinese medicine, how come his doctor say so. Thinking for a short while, NN said, his doctor told him that once the doctor told a patient not to eat notoginseng, the patient did not listen and died. Stephen said notoginseng is to take away the stasis of blood去菸血 and thining of blood. We seemed to understand why NN cannot eat it, but we can. And Koon Tai again asked how about the cost of Winterbugsummergrass冬蟲夏草, Joe said that the last day he visited Yue Hwa裕華國貨, it costed HK$10,000/catty. Mona said no, no, HK$5,000 can buy already. A voice said now it was saying that it has no real function.
Tomson said the last day he joined a cruise trip to see Aurora北極光. He said that he will never forget this adventure. The boat is going to sail to Iceland, and it is in fact going to Iceland. But the speed of the boat is so slow that they know it will never reach Iceland. Not long later, the boat captain announced that there was a hurricane near Iceland and they will change direction to another island. All of the 1300 passengers were astonished. As there are clever men within the group, soon they found that the hurricane was in Glassgow of Scotland, far far away from their place. All are furious, as they think that the Cruise captain is cheating the passengers just to reduce the sailing cost. As the trick was unveiled, the captain has to compromise to compensate them another cruise with discounts. The boat is of NCL, already a Company with good name. NN said recently he also had a trip to Yellowknife to see it, and showed us the pictures. They are really beautiful.
NN said these days our gatherings has fewer & fewer people. Luckily we still have Siu Ling & Mona joining with us. NN said before we had two gatherings in this restaurant. Last time was meeting with董潔文, a rush gathering as we found her, but she has to go back Australia in 2 days time. Only a few of us could join. The one before was gathering with June簡碧霞 & Godfrey黃國輝. We missed some classmates who seldom joined our gatherings. 鄧智 seldom joined. Alex李國榮joined & quitted with unknown cause.  馮潤鑑 quitted the forum. NN said Fung was happy to join our forum when he came back to us. He quitted cause the things posted in the forum was too left politically. Alex 陳忠信sponsored 秀華children education fund, but still cannot contact. Tomson said the group email account was not functioning. He will do something on email so that classmates not joining whatsapp can have the basic informations. NN said he has some uneasy feeling to some Classmates as he was bullying at that time in TPS. Koon Tai said Bullying the classmates is no good, but he felt very honourable being bullied by NN. He thought that NN being the chief captain of prefects must have good reasons to doing bullying and so he respected up to now. Everybody laughed at Koon Tai’s humour.

The room we sat was a big one with different furnishings. Looking at the furnishings, we began to talk about our eyes. Kakoo said he did not have short sighted and not comfortable on wearing glasses, nor Ralph, nor Siu Ling and Joe. Tomson said these days people used to clear away Cataract白內障, and told us that don’t let the Cataract be too ripe, cause that will blocked the doctor from seeing if the eyes have Matcula黃斑, which is a more serious eye disease occurred in the Seniors. Kakoo said these days science is so advance that they will find you anywhere through your eyeball. NN added that also finger print is something which is unique to you. Koon Tai asked if he can change the face易容, if they can find him? Ralph said if you go to China, when passing through immigration, they have a machine to facing you.  Ralph added, if you looked at your ID card photo which was taken 10 years ago, you have already changed your face. But the machine detected your eyeball and recognized you. 
Food was delicious and soon came to the end. Our talking did not seem wanting to end. Tomson asked should we hold a 55 years reunion gathering. This was unanimously agreed. We then took a group photo and had an early return home this time.

Reported by Ralph Lam