EPT---
The four of them met up in Beijing that summer before they went to college. One, the painfully insecure ABC kid. Two, the shy, quiet nerdy girl--tall and who ate ice cream continually in a futile effort to gain weight. Three, the vivacious ditz. Four, the older, more mature second-year of the bunch. They talked.
The ABC made a fool of himself. It would only be the first of several missteps he made on the road to college. The shy, nerdy girl remembered him as a blowhard. The ditz laughed him off. The second-year ignored him.
Later, at college, the ABC began to chase other girls while striking up an odd friendship with the tall, nerdy one. The ditz and the second-year slowly faded from his life as he met other people.
First, his roommate. Korean chaebol owner's grandson, arrogant as hell, full of himself. Also had a disturbing tendency to manipulate and abuse people's trust. Ended up spreading all the private confidings of the ABC out to the college within the first month of college.
So the two of them don't speak to each other anymore.
Next, the other chinese people. You have your "rice ball" couple, the ones that don't spend any time apart. You have your "chill" couple, the one that doesn't make everyone around them lightbulbs.
The Hong Kongers. The ABC gets to chase this Hong Kong girl, fails utterly, and basically screws his relationship with the biggest group of asians on campus for his entire first two years of college. And he screws his reputation in some of their eyes forever.
Eventually, the ABC and the tall nerdy girl end up together. They fall deeply in love. And promptly, that girl's friends make it hard. They advise her to break it up. But they make it through. The ABC feels the guilt, because it's really his fault that she has to go through all this.
During their second year, the ABC reinvents himself. He works himself into a position of respect, president of the finance club, he tries hard. But it's futile. He knows that he would never have the raw brainpower of the Singaporeans or the connections of the rich international students to find respect in their eyes.
But yet he needs their respect so much, not for himself, but for his girlfriend. He kisses ass. He knows he'll be mocked for being this ingratiating person, full of shit, but he accepts it just so that he can be one of their circle.
Meanwhile, the other couples face issues of their own. And interesting stories abound.
Like the cracker chasing asian ho who sleeps around with white guys, and then complains about her love life to all her asian guy friends. None of her guy friends are kind enough to tell her that she shouldn't do this.
Or the rich guys who miss the easy days of Li Po Chun, of CIS... of Bangkok days spent drinking and smoking weed and getting better grades than the entire class. They take to drink, become so introverted.
This one guy from a nouveau riche family in southeast asia, especially. He spends money in such obscene amounts that his father briefly discontinues financial support, all to impress his girlfriend and her international school friends, who are simply amused by his desire to fit in with the cool crowd. They keep him in their circle because he pays for the alcohol. Tragically, he woos a pretty, smart girl who loves him, but he treats her without sincerity because he can't get any respect from her friends. Finally, he decides to cheat on his girlfriend with a girl two years younger and in front of all of the girl's friends, saying that he doesn't care anymore.
Or the most tragic story, the poor HKer kid whose long-distance girlfriend cheated on him through an entire year, who left him standing outside her dorm in the rain for three hours when he went to her college during a surprise visit from him, whose defence was that since he screwed around to it was two wrongs make a right (He didn't screw around). Yeah. Oh, and by the way, during this whole ordeal, his mom comes to him and says "don't be surprised if some stranger your age comes to you and says that he/she is your half-sibling... your dad has been fucking around for over ten years."
Third year hits. Reality like a bamboo rod. People wake up to the fact that they might need a job upon graduation, that mommy and daddy won't support them forever. It is here that the connections become discovered.
The spoiled girl from Shenzhen whose daddy's connections can get her into any investment bank of her choice. And who lets this news be known to the rest of the campus.
The guy from China whose family owns one of the biggest golf courses in Guangzhou province, who also is politically well-connected and hardworking. Conducts himself like a second-generation Rothschild, as calculating in his friendship as he is in his finance. Everyone is fucking scared of him; yet he simply prefers to act like an impersonal force of nature, sucking up job offers like nothing else.
The guy from Hong Kong whose father is the secretary of the treasury and whose mother is a group head at a leading bank. Good looking and good natured as well, and single. When people find out about his background, well, let's just say he was very popular among the ladies.
The guy from New York whose grandfather was a Loeb and worked on the first-ever hostile takeover of Pennzoil in 1965. He mentors the ABC and saves him when no one else would think of talking to the creepy doofus.
People end up finding jobs and going their separate ways. The ABC finds a job in Hong Kong. He finally is accepted. He finally has a circle of friends. He can go be with his girlfriend, who has also found a job there.
But then she gets sick. And so sick that the ABC's parents bar him from marrying her. And just like that, the ABC spends his last year torn between staying with this girl and looking for another girlfriend. And his life loses color, he begins to go through the motions.
And regretting the Hong Kong girl which he still longs for. Regretting all the awkwardness, all the insecurity, all the wasted time... which has disappeared like tears in the rain, lost forever.
He graduates a fundamentally changed man. Because we pay for wisdom in installments. The first installment costs our innocence. The second payment costs our youth. And the third payment cost him his love.
Finally, the 100-hour workweeks start and all these stories lose their hue for some. They blend together and become a chronicle, a list of things which have happened.
But to those that always think of what might have been, they will always serve as a hidden bruise on the soul. A sore spot, a memory of a word not said, of a reputation not fixed, of a love not returned.
Everyone has a story. Only some keep their memories in color. But what is really the difference?
)))
p
