Dear Katie, Joy, and Hao,
It
is with profound sadness and
shock that I heard of Winston’s passing.
But I take solace in the report that he did not suffer. I hope that you
will take comfort in the knowledge
not only that he left behind some great contributions to human
knowledge, but
that he left many friends who fondly remember him. I was among those
lucky friends. He was one of my best friends in Pui Ching, and one of
my best friends, period.
Here are a few things that I
remember of Winston. He entered Pui Ching in Grade 10. Perhaps he had been held back a year because of
his dialect, he was taller and bigger than the other kids. But because of his friendly smiles and
easy-goingness, the rest of the kids felt free to tease him about his accents
and good manners. One day he came to
school with a face mask because he had a flu and did not want to spread it. So naturally we teased him about the new
muzzle for dogs. He would chase us
around, but always stopped short of hitting.
Finally he tore the face mask out and threw it away, and said something
like “Fine. If you guys want to catch the flu, be my guest”, but always with
his friendly smile.
He could be very mischievous
too. In Physics lab, Kim Ho Woo (胡劍豪)and
Winston and I were assigned as lab partners.
One day the lab work was to determine the gravitational constant. It required counting the number of swings in
one minute of a pendulum. It was late in
the lunch hour, and Kim wanted to finish early to catch the ferry to go home
for lunch. So while we were still
horsing around, Kim started counting the swings, “one, two, three, …17” , at
which point Winston would start “19, 20,23,24,…”, and Kim continued “19,20, 23,24,…”
then realized the counting was messed up. Kim would restart, and Winston would repeat
his antics and mess the counting up again.
Kim was quite frustrated but Winston and I were having great fun. (To Kim’s credit, he also never lost his
temper though very hungry.)
For a period of time, it was a
fad among us to learn the principle of vacuum-tube radios, study the schematics,
and, with our low budgets in coins, buy from the street vendors recycled but usable radio components like vacuum tubes,
and assemble them into a working radio with a soldering gun. One day I was in Winston’s home, with these precious
junks spread over his dining table, and each with a hot soldering gun to do a
such a project. Not being too careful, I
would just lay the soldering gun down at whatever convenient spot on the
table. Winston, not being vigilant,
would back his elbow up and lose a few square mm of skin. When Mrs Ko came out to investigate the
screams, he would say it was his own carelessness. After Mrs Ko left, he said to me “See, I told
my mother it is my own fault”, and I did not see his point and replied, “But it
is your own fault.” Winston said “AI
YAA!?” but still with his smile.
Winston loved to tell tall
tales. One sample: when he gave me a
street-tour in downtown Philadelphia, he said, “Many tourists drown in downtown
Philadelphia.” I said “Huh?” He said, “because
they all need to turn their faces up to see the high rises, and rain gets into their
noses. Heheheh.”
Another of his tales, a true one
but told with his habitual suspense and timing, is that he was the most senior
member of the world team which made the universe-shaking discovery of the Higg’s
Boson. He added that that is because his
European peers from CERN had a mandatory retirement age of 55, and had all been
replaced by junior researchers.
Wai-Hon has already reported that
Winston modestly submitted to our teasing of his Carnegie Institute of Technology as 假野CIT (fake
CIT, in contrast to Caltech, called CIT at that time). But a few years later, he did declare
“假野CIT 唔水架!!”. History proved him right.
Winston will be fondly remembered.
Take care.
Y.K.Chan (陳潤國)