Goodbye again

I have just given out photoframes to my colleagues, with descriptions of them according to their name acronyms.

My ex-editor, Gim Ean, is showing off black and white photos of her holding hands with Stevie Wonder (to a bunch of giggling journos) as a young journalist then.

My colleague Priya is asking around if anyone knew of any Malaysian philosophers... I replied that Malaysians probably don't think very much.

I've been at Star for 2 years and 5 months, and now I'm moving on. I remembered I used to be so awed at the things people did around me, the kind of knowledge the media had access to, and the power we have in our hands- though many times, our hands are tied.

Since then, March 8 came and gone, Pakatan Rakyat was formed, multiple huge street demonstrations have taken place, we saw the surfacing of various politicians' bedroom antics, we saw a new PM take power, Anwar is being charged for sodomy yet again, the teaching of Science and Maths reversed back to BM and various people are dropping dead. Some were shocking, like Jacko or Yasmin, some hit home hard, like Teoh.

Since then, I have shaken hands with the poor and the rich, spoke with the famous and the forgotten, learnt how to survive on roads with my map book and my dad as GPS, ranted over injustices, gone on three Europe trips, swam with fishes in Perhentian, learnt the pain of struggling between truth and reality, gotten engaged and now on the road to marriage.

In a few weeks, I would be facing 500 kindergarten kids, 30 staff and 1,000 parents and waking up at 6.30am instead of 9am.

Goodbye, Star. Maybe I'll come back one day.