Seeing an Old Friend 老友相聚

I had lunch with an old friend today.

Vincent and I go way back. We went to the same school eons ago. My friend was something of a legend for being at the top of the class year after year. A Renaissance Man in the truest sense, Vincent’s interests range from philosophy and quantum physics to classical music and literature. Because of his many esoteric pursuits, the precocious teenager was neither the most approached nor the most approachable at school. He was relegated to a very small circle of friends, and I was one of them. His reclusive dispositions were a personal choice to him but highbrow snobbery to others. To me, however, Vincent was simply ahead of his time.

Lunch with Vincent

Happily married to a lovely wife with a baby boy, Vincent now teaches full-time at a leading university in Hong Kong and pursues his writing career part-time. Every time Vincent publishes a new book, he invites me for lunch and gives me an autographed copy fresh off the press. I was thrilled to receive an honorary mention in the foreword to one of his early works.

This afternoon we decided to have lunch in SoHo. As soon as we sat down at the table, Vincent, true to form, whipped out a pen and signed a copy of his fourth book before sliding it across the table toward me. A fifth title is already in the works, he said. I congratulated him and, desperately trying to keep up, told him about some of the projects I was working on at the moment.

Vincent's new book

As the lunch went on, we exchanged our thoughts on García Márquez and Borges and argued about recordings of Brahms and Shostakovich. That’s what Vincent and I do whenever we are in the same room, just the way we used to back in our school days. Truth be told, Vincent and my two brothers, Kelvin and Dan, are probably the only people in the world with whom I can stay up all night talking politics, history, literature and music. They are the muses in my life, an inexhaustible source of inspiration. And if a person is lucky enough to find his muses, he knows all too well not to let them get away. Even though Vincent and I fell out of touch for almost two decades while I drifted from one city to another in North America, we managed to rekindle our friendship soon after I repatriated to Hong Kong, as if we had never been apart.

We've all got people to see, places to go

These days with family, work and our many side pursuits and pet projects, Vincent and I don’t get to see each other very often. But every once a while, we set a time and place and indulge in the simple pleasure of each other’s company. Today we did just that.

About the Author 關於作者

Born in Hong Kong, Jason Y. Ng is a globetrotter who spent his entire adult life in Italy, the United States and Canada before returning to his birthplace to rediscover his roots. He is a lawyer, published author, and contributor to The Guardian , The South China Morning Post , Hong Kong Free Press and EJInsight . His social commentary blog As I See It and restaurant/movie review site The Real Deal have attracted a cult following in Asia and beyond. Between 2014 and 2016, he was a music critic for Time Out (HK) . Jason is the bestselling author of Umbrellas in Bloom (2016), No City for Slow Men (2013) and HONG KONG State of Mind (2010). Together, the three books form a Hong Kong trilogy that charts the city's post-colonial development. His short stories have appeared in various anthologies. Jason also co-edited and contributed to Hong Kong 20/20 (2017) and Hong Kong Noir (2019). Jason is also a social activist. He is an ambassador for Shark Savers and an o...

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