15
GRADUATION
University is one of those once in a lifetime experiences that we can
only experience once in our lifetime, unless we either don’t go to
university or we go back to university later in life. It was a stage in my
life that came with so many blessings and so many different people.
Third year was rounding up soon and exams were just around the
corner. The day of graduation was coming so close and I became
nostalgic. What would I do when we left and had to carve and forge
our own way in the world?
Ollie was nostalgic too, and he had mixed feelings about
graduation. Do not get me started on Muncho. Rex was also in a very
positive place, he had finally found love in the form of a chickpea
chinchilla called Squilla. Unfortunately she was someone’s else’s spirit
guide’s archnemesis, so they didn’t get to see each other much. Who
knew where the spirit guidee would end up. Rex was worried about
this, but he was also living blissfully in the moment and seizing precious
time with Squilla whenever he could. He was so mellow that it made
Muncho nervous, which was unfamiliar to him. He even kept forgetting
the words to ‘Happy Birthday’, his favourite song. You meet people at
different stages in your life, some stay for a while and leave, some
stay forever, some you get to see occasionally and others never,
some you see more than you want to and some you see only in a
metaphorical sense. Was I going to see Ollie again? In real life as well
as in my mind life? That was a question I couldn’t answer. I
remembered the first day I met Ollie.
It all happened so fast and all I could think that day was: ‘who is
this boy and why is he so funny?’
Our graduation day finally arrived. My family had ridden their horses
down from Qingdao the previous day to attend. It took place in a large
hall where all the graduates stood for a long time in two columns with a