This is a picture of Terence and me from my trip to Hong Kong last Christmas when we met up for the first time after 8 years of sporadic contact through emails and IMs. I knew Terence when I was in first grade in Beacon Hill School. He changed schools in second grade but our paths crossed again in grade 7 when he took the same bus as me to school. My earliest memory of Terence is from when we were five years old; I was talking to him in the school playground while he ate something disgusting and ketchup-covered. Can you find us here? I am in the back row, third from the left. Terence is in the second from the top row, third from the left.

Anyway, it was a huge surprise to discover that he is working in Beijing this year. Terence emailed me when he heard I was going to be in Beijing. He is starting a business – a social network like Friendster, or Facebook but with a specific emphasis on language exchange and learning. He is working here with another blast from my past: Guy my classmate in secondary school who I haven’t seen or talked to at all in the nine years since I left Hong Kong. I finally met up with these guys tonight when Terence asked if I was interested in dinner and a trip to Ikea since they needed to get things for their new apartment.

They work in a building next to the Wal-Mart on Zhi Chun Lu so we met there, stopped by their office, and hailed a couple of cabs to Ikea – discovering in the process that Beijing taxis only take a maximum of three passengers. We had dinner in the Ikea restaurant and yes we had Swedish meatballs. It was fun catching up on old times, learning about their fledgling business, and hearing about Guy’s mandarin learning experience in Shanghai. Guy took off after dinner to return to the office leaving Terence to wander around the store. Beijing Ikea looks identical to other Ikeas I’ve visited (Toronto, Hong Kong, Virginia, and even one actually in Sweden) and the furniture still has funny Swedish names. Magnus and a contingent of Swedish students at BLCU actually have plans to spend Christmas day in Ikea in homage to their motherland.