March 14 的日记

March 14 的日记：A dim sum afternoon with the Chung Lings，晴天I have been looking forward to the dim sum for weeks..wasnt sure who I am going to meet this time. I was late myself due to some last minute problems sending a friend off to the airport, hehee..paiseh :-p When I sampai, there were so many new faces! The young Chung Lings outnumbered the seniors but they were all very chatty and friendly. It feels like they know me somehow (because of the facebook group lah,what else?!) but I dont know which one to start getting to know first..

We were connected quickly and were the loudest group in the basement of the restaurant! To my surprise, majority of us are young working professionals who have been living and working in the UK for a while, rather than students. How come I never meet so many Penangites in the UK before?! The best of all, there were people from all 3 schools - CLHS, CLBW, CL Private who came to the gathering and some of them came all the way from Daventry, Bournemouth, Birmingham, Cambridge and Bath. This shows the unity of the Chung Lings, wow! (hats off!!)

Moving on from dim sum to dessert, we finally left the restaurant around evening time and continued our conversations at Costa Coffee, not surprisingly that once again, we were the loudest chirpy group speaking Hokkien, Mandarin and rojak English. Cant help it lah..we only meet once or twice a month yet so much to say and so much to share. There were managers, business man, accountants, analyst, student, soon-to-be parent etc from different industries and location..not only did we enjoy talking and sharing ideas about Penang, good food, UK job market, Malaysian politics, football, sharing kids’ photos, exchanging business contacts (ahdui, the list goes on..) and of course, discussing about how to host the very important Chung Ling Worldwide gathering event coming to Europe for the first time! We also get a lot of attention/ eye-staring from the other customers nearby who are curious about who we are ;-p So there you go, from afternoon dim sum lunch to evening dinner time, from Chinese restaurant to Costa Coffee, I’m sure everyone who came really enjoyed it!

Thanks for coming people; another good time with ‘kaki-lang’ from Penang is always nice in this gloomy recession UK! I hope the next event – the football game in April will also be as good as this one (hey, don’t you think that it’s good to release some tension during credit crunch time by kicking football in a big wide park?). No plans for another dim sum in April yet but hey at least, we try to meet up every few weeks yeah! So don’t forget to confirm and turn up lah..I was hoping to meet a few more Chung Ling girls but some confirmed, never come somehow..想到了就要做到，不要hesitate的。 I for one, am very happy to know new friends who can speak hokkien/rojak language and finally put a real face to the names that I have seen before on facebook! :-> 朋友们，再来一次好吗？