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Old School Friends

I left school many years ago, the Chase Terrace Secondary Modern School in Staffordshire, a Midlands county in the UK. From there I was sent to a college of further education in Wednesbury, the Staffordshire College of Commerce, which was many miles away from my home town.

I was the only one from my school to take this route, and as a result, left behind my old school chums, and found new ones from different areas of the wide area of the Midlands, I lost contact with these old chums. Where are you now, Paula Dawes, Philip Green, Ronald Rose, Stuart Richardson?

To make matters worse, my working career started in the the new field of computers, which non of my old class mates had entered, and a new set of friends emerged.

My career in computers led me to moving home many times, afar a field as Saudi Arabia, again, leaving old friends behind and aquiring new ones on the way.

It is now years later I am wondering where these old friends are.

In the UK, and I expect in many countries now, there is an internet service call Friends Reunited, a site which has been going for many years, maybe predating some of the social networking sites such as Facebook. This service allows a registered person to enter in schools attended and the dates, thus allowing old class mates to make contact again. This has been further expanded to work places etc.

It was on Friends Reunited that I have found old class mates, seen what they have been doing, where they are now after all these years.
But there has been for me no physical contact, phone or eye to eye. Not like people I know who still have very good contact with ex school friends, perhaps seeing them through and sharing the different stages of their lives, the boy/girl friends, the marrage, the children, the divorce or seperation etc.
Quite different to my wife Mee Len, who over the last few days has had calls and get-to-gethers with old class mates, in Bukit Mertajam, Malaysia, recalling past memories of teachers and their nicknames. Recalling old class mates, with their good points and bad. Telling where people are, how they are progessing, the stories.
Miss Loh (Science Teacher), Mooi Hua, Tai Leng, ?, Mooi Mua, Margaret Tan, Choo Moi's husband, Chooi Moi, Mee Len, Mary Siam, Gaik Lian, Kooi Yin     Kooi Yin, Tai Leng, Gaik Lian, Mee Len, Lim Booi, behind settee Mee Len's sister Mee Wah
It was good for me to witness this getting together. How friendships may never end. How once they were in groups which never mixed at school, but now over time these divisons do not exist, and they are one.