From: James Wang 工工系王正
... For various reasons, I did not commit to come until the day before the event. However, I must admit the phone call couple weeks earlier by 陳義正 from Bay area, has something to do with my final decision. He is one of my classmate of IE department, with whom I have lost contact since 1974. His phone call from the area of this event rekindled the warm friendship I had with the 74 class and demonstrated the enthusiastic welcome from the host classmates. He even offered to pick me up at the airport if I arrive too late at night. I am glad I finally made it. It is one of the best time I had in my life. I am certainly looking forward to the next reunion.
Although most of IE classmates were in Taiwan, the five of us that did come, which includes (左起)李鴻隆﹐李中豪﹐陶宏鼎﹐陳義正, and myself, had a good time together. We went out for dinner at a Chinese restaurant on Friday evening and were seated around the same table at the banquet on Saturday night as well. All of them brought their spouses to the reunion except me. I hope the next time my wife and my daughter can come. Both 李鴻隆 and 李中豪 are now working in Shanghai. Since I just took a new job that will involve traveling to Shanghai, I might get a chance to meet with them at Shanghai in the near future.
I also got to meet my classmates of the Architecture Department. Although I transferred to IE department after one year, these are the fellows I shared the freshman year with. We live in the same dorm room or next door to each other. Besides, 嚴慧玲 was the head of 北一女校友會 while I was the head of the 建中校友會. We used to work together a lot to host campus activities. Knowing both her husband and herself are Roman Catholics, I shared with them my experience of conversion back to Catholicism 20 years ago and the miracles I encountered after my younger daughter died of bone cancer when she was 10 years old. I also shared my empathy with 溫光偉﹐ whose wife passed away in a car accident. I hope God can heal his grief. He will be in my prayer.
After I returned to Dallas, I told my daughter, Christina, that we have 90 seconds talk allowed for each person at the banquet. Her immediate response was: “That must not be enough for you.” This is exactly the opposite of traditional Chinese saying, 知女莫若父. However, I told her I was rewarded with a round of applause after my talk and used the remaining time to share my first hand experience of colonoscopy. Overall, I feel sorry about using too much time and talked about a subject that might not be of interest to some. Hopefully, the humor brought some fun moments for everybody. I have a few classmates came to tell me after the banquet that they are going to take a colonoscopy after hearing my story. This tells me that health is the common priority for our age. Everything else is secondary.
Best regards,
James Wang 王正
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