May 6-7, 2009: Yushi's Farewell

It all began with me going with Monse to Jesse's room. Yushi was bringing all his extra stuff to Jesse's room. His Fellowship friends were there to help him pack and to say goodbye. By 10, they all left. Yushi, Jesse, Ash, Monse and I then went to the foyer to meet-up with Karina, Roy, Sita, Midhun, Jess, Annie, and Josef. Yushi gave his sim card to Annie as Annie asked for it for her friend.

We all walked to the bus stop near Science Park I. I rode the bus with Yushi and Monse to Buona Vista. Monse alighted at Commonwealth to go to her house. Yushi and I then continued the journey to the Airport. We caught the last train to Changi Airport at 11:22 PM.

When we got there, we looked for the terminal where United Airlines check-in is located. It turns out that Terminal 3, where the MRT station is, is Terminal 3. We looked for a place to go and stay for the next few hours. We went to the third floor and saw closed shops. It was kinda creepy then as everything was closed. We went down to the main floor for Departure and looked for a place to plug our laptops.

We then went to the seats near the entrance doors, near the electronic weighing scale. We weighed Yushi's large bag, and it weighed 22.8 kgs, 0.2 kg from the 23 kg limit. I weighed myself, ad got 119.9 kgs as my weight reading.

Yushi showed me photos from home, photos of his friends, some of them I can recognize. I got to see how they lived before. I saw old photos of Jesse and Ashley back in their 1st year. It was somehow fun to see their old photos and how different (or same) they look like.

We then watched a movie which Yushi got from Jesse. Gran Torino, with Clint Eastwood in the lead. Yushi bought some grape juice before the movie started. The movie was rather nice. I found it tragic and at the same time funny, in the way the Mongs were portrayed and all.

Although it would take a long time, we still tried to copy some photos from my laptop to his laptop, photos from our friends. But then with limited time, we failed to copy everything. I decided to just burn everything in CD's and send it to him in a package.

Yushi checked-in at around 4:40. He was assigned the seat 51A on hsi way to HK. After check-in, Yushi ate one of the mangoes I brought to the airport. Luckily, it was the sweet one. He stayed with me for 45 more minutes, waiting for some of the photo transfers to finish. At 5:30, I went with him to the entrance of the Departure Hall. I gave him a giant hug, well, it's normal for me, but giant for him. Haha. I don't usually give hugs, but I felt like since there is a chance that I won't get to see Yushi again, then a hug from me to my kuya is just right.

I waited until he finished immigration, before I went to the MRT station. The train just arrived when I go down at 5:47. It left Changi at 5:52. I got to Buona Vista at 6:40. On my way hom,e I felt sad and tired. I didn't even know that I fell asleep already until I woke-up at City Hall station.

I reached PGP at nearly 7, and found that I forgot my adaptor plugs at the airport. I also forgot to get the EZ link from Yushi. In the end, I decided to send an offline message to Yushi, before I went to sleep. It was 7-ish already by then.

Yushi was kuya here in Singapore. And for a person who never experienced having a kuya, parting with him was hard. But I'm happy that he's now back in Canada, at least he can rest well there. In a few days, I'll be taking another friend to the airport, and I just don't know what will happen. The day after that, I'm going home to the Philippines.