Peter and I were good friends since 1960, when we went to VTS together (grade 7, 1st year of secondary school in HK). He and I sat on the same bench (we have fixed seat assignment of 3 students on a long bench, I had the middle seat, and he sat on my left) for the first two years of our school life, six hours a day, five days a week. We lived just one block from each other. During lunch break everyday, he and I and Alfred would "race" each other to the bus stop 400 yards away to catch the bus to go home for lunch. He won every time of course, being a good runner himself.
I often went to his home to play. I still remember his 4th brother ShuFun taught us to play contract bridge. He also managed to let me borrow his new Sony 4-track stereo audio tape recorder, so that I could duplicate our favourite songs from his to mine. At one time I had a serious fever and I could not go to school, and he was the first one to come over to visit me by my bed side. We often went after school to the inner track of a race course close by together with Christopher Fok and William Woo, Alfred Ma and a few others. Sometimes we ran around the course (1 round = approx 1400 meters), and sometimes we just played plastic ball soccer, using make shift goals and imaginary boundary lines formed by our school bags. We had to watch out for the park attendants because we were not allowed to be on the grass other than walking. When the attendant showed up, we just stopped and waited for him to go away, then we continued!
After secondary school graduation I went onto matriculation and eventually HKU and he went to HKTC (Polytechnic). We kept in touch with each other though we were in different schools. In the summer of 1967, my first year in HKU, I dragged him along to a volunteer week long summer work camp to build a concrete wall along a stream in Aberdeen. His cheerful personality and helping attitude had won him a lot of friendship amongst the campers. I still have one photo of him holding two pieces of 4x4 as he helped to unload them from the roadside. I'll upload it to the gallery.
We lost contact with each other after he went to Carolina. I also immigrated to Los Angeles in 1981. Several years after I bought my house in Hawthorne, I got a knock on my door one evening. Outside, there stood Peter! What a surprise! He told me that we was not even sure, but he somewhat got my address and he just gave it a try. That was when he first joined the US Custom Department, and he was just renting a room in Torrance. His home was still in Raleigh and he was commuting every weekend back home to see Monica and Alex. I also met Peter's mother when she was visiting, and she even taught my wife how to use some fancy strings to create classic Chinese art patterns.
After he settled in Irvine, he told me one evening that his 36-inch Sony TV had a problem. I volunteered to take a look, and eventually got it fixed - for another week's of service, oh well so much for the "fix".
We continued to see each other until one day he said that he had nose cancer. I was shocked, but eventually he recovered, and even had a few more years of fabulous career life after that. Three years ago, he told me that he would have a family cruise in Denmark that summer. Later he told me again that he had to cancel that trip on the eve of going, as his checkup revealed that his cancer had suddenly reappeared. Hope and disappointment followed after that, but he just hanged on. I called him up on 7/25/2014 and he said he was not doing too well. I offered to visit him the next day, but he said he would go to San Francisco to see Alex the next morning. He also said that might be his last farewell to me. I was afraid of calling him again after that, for fear of hearing the final bad news. Well, that conversation was his farewell to me!
Peter, we miss you and your family.