I had never attended my alma mater alumni dinner before despite being a member for a while now and wouldn’t have considered it had my friend not persuaded and beseeched me to go. I asked my closer mates, N and C, if they wanted to go and surprise, surprise, they agreed to go. So I had no choice but to give our names. The cost was pretty steep to me and even alumni members received a slight discount. I quickly browsed and booked an apartment unit for the three of us but later cancelled it as I wasn’t happy when the apartment management wanted a deposit even before we checked in. Sod it. I then booked another apartment unit at another building about ten minutes’ walk away from the hotel via Airbnb.
On Saturday, 11 August 2018, I left micasa after 09:30. I was running late so I took the MRT to Pasar Seni then changed for the GoKL bus to The Weld. From The Weld, I walked to Parkview apartment and after meeting the apartment unit representative, I left my bag and shoes and walked to KLCC for my date with Tommy.
I had to run errands and only returned to Parkview after my late lunch. After retrieving the keys, I went up to the unit and made myself comfortable. While waiting for my mates to arrive, I decided to pump the iron.
My mates arrived well after 5 p.m. and I went down to fetch them and bring them back to the apartment. We then had a quick practice for our batch’s Flash Mob performance at the dinner (yes, you read that right! Me with my two left feet!) before taking our shower and getting ready for the evening. We left well after 8 p.m. and my friends insisted they were not going to walk to the hotel so who was I to argue (unless I wanted to walk all by myself there).
We had fun catching up with each other and taking lots of photos. We had to listen to speeches but that was expected and well, we don't have the opportunity to listen to these old girls/seniors talk that often anyway. Dinner was served after the speeches. The food was great but inadequate: a platter of fruit plate for a table of 10? Either the hotel thought we were on a diet or wanted to pull a lame joke. The amount I paid didn’t justify the menu (Malay and local food, not even International or Western). There was no door gift either and I wasn’t lucky enough to win any lucky draw prize.
We left well after midnight - alhamdulillah exiting from the carpark wasn’t a nightmare as at the hotel where The Organisation holds its dinner. In fact, there was hardly any queue to exit the carpark at all.
Alumni dinners are great for meeting up with old friends. You get to meet with long lost friends in one place and don't have to talk or socialise all that much. There were those who were warm and genuinely happy to meet others and made the effort: my mates flew back from Doha, England, Kota Bharu and Kuala Terengganu; one rode the bus from Johor Bahru, one came over from Singers and my mate, N, drove up from Jasin. But there were also those who were aloof, unfriendly and cold and my mates and I couldn’t help wondering why they even bothered going if they couldn't be bothered to make the effort. Perhaps it’s their natural character that we’re not aware of. Or perhaps it was just us and perhaps there were others who felt the same towards us. As for me, I’m not on the batch’s Telegram group, heck, I don’t even have the Telegram app (nor do I bother with installing it; I already have enough WhatsApp messages to inundate me; I’m not even in the batch’s WhatSapp group because by the time I even bothered installing the App, the group had reached its membership limit); I don’t join in their annual trips, well, mainly because I’ve been to the places they went to, I didn’t get the notification because I'm not in the Telegram group and I’ve grown to love my own solo trips. In short, I keep mainly to myself but I’m sure I’m not the only one to do so.
So would I go to the next alumni dinner in two years’ time? It’s too soon to tell but some of our friends’ lukewarm indifferent attitude certainly didn’t have us exactly promising to be there. Then again, time will tell.
