EPTHow do you show her that you still love her? That you want her back?
Failing that, how do you at least break up in style?
A: You find a passport and stir-fry it.
This song always reminds me of fall quarter Junior year
When I went to college, I fell in with the international crowd real fast. Still don't know why. But I know why I stuck around them.
I had my first real, deep, serious, live-with-a-girl-and-talk-about-marriage relationship with a girl from China (not Sylvia... let's call her Rina instead), and got to know her friends pretty well. I picked up more spoken and written Chinese ability in those first six months of dating Rina than in six years of Chinese school. (Pillow talk is the easiest and fastest way to learn a language. Guaranteed.)
One of Rina's friends was this sweet, pretty girl from Guangzhou we'll call Elise. In the rush to pair up so many college freshmen experience, by the time the dust settled, my girl found me and Elise found this guy we'll call Shin.
Shin was from Thailand. His dad was fairly well off; he'd gone to Bangkok International School; Shin loved to throw around tons of cash. He was also really good at poker and at least 10 months younger than everyone else in our year. He was a really smart kid who liked to act tough, a little like James Dean in Rebel without a Cause. Elise liked that about him. She thought of him as her little brother.
Later, as all of us (me and the international students) accumulated cash from parents, summer internships with banks, accounting firms, trading firms, consultancies, and the like, all of us couples who'd met in freshman year moved, one by one, from dorms into this set of (relatively) luxurious condos, the only "yuppie" places to live in the entire neighborhood where we went to school. We'll call that set of buildings the Parkland Suites.
The Parkland Suites were a pair of 36-floor concrete boxes by the lake, about 10-15 units per floor. Corners were triples and quads, the rest were studios, singles, and doubles. Rent averaged 650 a month for a room in a double, triple, or quad; 1000 for a single and 800 for a studio. Expensive, but then again, amongst us econ/finance undergrads, it was our way of showing that we'd "arrived" (or at least had parents who loved us.)
I didn't bank up enough to move into Parkland until my third year. Rina and I shared a master bedroom in a double, and the smaller bedroom was rented out to the head of the campus Consulting Club. (Ironically, he would wind up becoming a banker and PE guy, while I, who was heavy into the Finance Club, would go into consulting and startups.)
My third year of college was undoubtedly my best year, from every perspective--academic, personal growth, all that bs stuff your parents tell you is important but you kind of shrug off--but it didn't start off that way.
Midway through the summer internship between my second and third year, I got wind that Rina was sick. Like, really, really sick. Like, need-to-be-cut-open-and-operated-on sick.
She'd always had chronic trouble with one of her internal organs, from childhood, but had never gotten operated on it as it was always just a minor nuisance. Unfortunately, her summer internship--fixed income derivatives with a Hong Kong bulge bracket--meant she drank lots of caffeine to work and alcohol to unwind, aggravating her preexistent condition.
We had a lot of other disagreements over her job out there too. I wanted to stay in the States; she fell in love with Hong Kong--the days of high finance in the cockpit of Asia, the nights of live wire voodoo. My tastes were a lot more bohemian.
She broke the news that her condition had worsened to the point of needing surgery, and it meant staying in China for fall quarter. I asked her why she didn't, you know, take a time out for a medical checkup during her internship, and she dodged the question twice. The third time I asked her, she said that she really liked her colleagues there and didn't want to jeopardize her full time offer by letting anyone know she was sick. She then broke the news that she was graduating early and heading off to Hong Kong after her third year, for good.
I hung up the phone and felt dead inside. More than that, I felt... jealous. I felt jealous of a city. I suddenly decided, fuck being poor and bohemian, I was going to be a baller, and I was going to surprise Rina when she got back in Winter Quarter.
Above me lived Shin, Elise's boyfriend, his Malay best friend... let's call him Teo, The third roommate was a friend of Elise... let's call him Shenzhen Mike. Shin was supposed to be living with Elise, but she was in Vienna for the quarter.
Shin had two other buds, who we'll call Jimmy, Billy, and Neptune. Shin, Jimmy, Billy, Neptune, and Teo used to get together and play hold'em. I joined their card games and together we'd shoot the shit.
I was the big loser at the card games, but I thought it was okay because I was learning how to be a cool, straight-thuggin canto-popping Mark Goh just like them. They probably all laughed at me as I tried to pick up their canto slang while paying them my lunch money, but I didn't care. I had a mission. I was going to grow a pair of balls bigger than an entire city, one busted hand at a time.
![[image loading]](http://img2-1.timeinc.net/ew/dynamic/imgs/091117/John-Woo/A-Better-Tomorrow_l.jpg)
At one point or another, every Asian guy goes through a phase of wanting to become this man.
One fall weekend, Shin planned a huge party in his room. We spent the better part of a Thursday evening trying to get a wall-length mirror into his room on the 36th floor.
Oh, right. Shin, Teo, and Shenzhen Mike lived in 3606 Parkland. I lived in 3506, right under them. This becomes important later.
The party was one of those things that just couldn't go wrong. Shin spent upwards of two thousand bucks on alcohol. An entire dormful of freshman asian girls showed up. Teo even custom-made a party mix, blending together the start and end of over a hundred party tracks so that the music really never stopped.
One pair of froshie asian roommates, we'll call them Cecilia and Grace, got pretty friendly with Shin and the rest of us. Grace, in particular, fell for Shin.
After the party, we were all cleaning up, and I spotted Grace nibbling on Shin's ear a little. The following weekend, during the poker game, Shin invited Grace and Cecilia over again. They didn't bring cash but wanted to play poker, so we let them play with shots. As in, they would pay their way out of losing hands by drinking shots. I actually had a good night, mainly because those two ladies had a terrible one. By the end of the evening, Cecilia smelled like an open bottle of Absolut Raspberri and Grace was spending fifteen minutes inside Shin's bathroom for every five she spent outside.
Teo, Neptune, Jimmy, Billy, and I spent turns taking care of Cecilia, while Shin went in and out of his room to take care of Grace.
Midway through the evening, we'd found out Grace had been dating this guy we'll call Bernard. Bernie was an HKer one year older than Grace and one year younger than us. He'd just started dating Grace, having picked her up in that start-of-year-dogpile of relationships, and Grace already kinda disliked him. Bernie was one of those guys who was born with a huge chip on his shoulder, since he was smart enough to test into a HK international secondary school but not rich enough to have social life once enrolled. I tried to sympathize, but his obnoxious attitude always got in the way.
Anyhow, Shin disappeared for an hour and then emerged from his bedroom with Grace literally wrapped around him. She was wearing one of Shin's t-shirts and a pair of Elise's shorts. Both of their necks were covered in love bites.
Shin said she'd puked all over herself and he had to clean her up in the bathtub. We all kind of nodded along. Then he made us promise not to tell Elise. We kept nodding. Bros before hos, right?
Then Grace started mentioning she should really go back to her dorm, because Bernard was supposed to meet her at 10AM the next day to take her shopping and she didn't want him to be worried.
We all kind of looked at each other with "oh shit" eyes, then looked at Cecilia, who by this point had her head permanently pointed towards a trash can. Neptune said something like "well I hope she doesn't remember anything" and then Shin immediately fed her the remainder of a Johnnie Walker black label. She passed out.
One less problem to worry about, until in walked Shenzhen Mike. He kind of looked at all of us, then hurried into his room, slamming the door. Shin's eyes grew wide and he looked at Teo, then cocked his chin in the direction of SZ Mike's room. Teo shrugged and said something in canto which I vaguely understood as "he probably doesn't know what the fuck is going on."
We ended up calling the drunk van and getting the ladies home. So that was that.
The ending song on Teo's party mix
The next morning, I woke up to a call from Rina. Her number started with 8610, the China-Beijing area code. She hadn't even bothered to use a calling card. It was the first time she'd called since she got out of surgery.
Was I with Shin last night, she asked. I said yes. Did I see anything, she asked. I said I was drunk and I didn't remember. She said something about how Elise knew that Shin had cheated on her and was heartbroken. I maintained my story of having inexplicable memory loss. Rina's tone got a little cold and she said something about how I wouldn't have the balls to try shit like that no matter how drunk I was. I hung up.
I went up to Shin's room. Teo opened the door; Shin was still sound asleep.
One look at me and Teo knew what was up. It was then that my phone rang, a call from Cecilia.
Apparently Bernie had found out, and emailed every single person on the Hong Kong students listhost about the sordid affair, with a few choice canto slurs for Shin (but none for his oh-so-perfect girlfriend). From there it was trivial for someone to forward it on to Elise.
I decided to go back to sleep. Shin would probably take his anger out on Bernie, and that would be that, I thought. I was wrong.
Read Part 2 here: http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?id=371960
