I bumped into an old friend the other day. Someone I’ve known since JC — born two days before me, a fellow Libran, which is to say chronically indecisive, forever weighing both sides of everything, but fair and fiercely loyal once you’re his. We go back to the late-night MRT rides home, Friday nights out of Yishun, back when we spent a good chunk of our NUS years volunteering at the student care centre there. NUS Community Service Club. Most of my closest people from those years came from that same clique — the kind of bond you don’t quite realise you’re forming while you’re forming it.
Except I couldn’t recognise him. He looked different — younger, somehow, a reddish tinge to his hair, like the years had been kind to him while they’d quietly done a number on me. I stood there struggling to place a face I’d known for half my life. Then he greeted me, that same cheery greeting he’s always had, unchanged, and it landed like a key turning. The last time we’d actually exchanged messages, I worked out later, was close to two years ago.
Here’s the thing, though. That reunion above didn’t quite happen the way I told it. I woke up from a dream.
I say “not quite,” because a month and a half ago I really did run into him — at Toa Payoh Hub, of all the unremarkable places. And in real life, awake, I fumbled. I couldn’t find the words. Which is its own kind of irony, because this wasn’t just some MRT acquaintance. Back in our NUS days he was one of my closest confidants. We had this strange little tradition, the two of us: two weeks before every semester’s exams, we’d go to a KTV and holler ourselves hoarse. Just the two of us. And you know what — I’m half-convinced that ritual is why we did well in those exams. There’s nothing like a night of pure indulgence to guilt-trip you into focusing afterwards. Only years later did I recognise it for what it was: a kind of mental skills training, the release valve that made the discipline possible.
Life has a wondrous, wicked way about it. I remember him, just right before we graduate, urging everyone to keep our ties close — meet up often, don’t let it fade. And yet somehow almost nobody ever organised anything regular. Everyone caught in their own web of living. When his wife was carrying their firstborn — now a poised, well-spoken young girl with a mind entirely her own, who decided at thirteen that she would be a writer and submitted her whole portfolio to SOTA — I remembered the two words I told him.
Back then in 2012, I told him then that we must 惜缘. Treasure the fate that brought us together. 惜缘. And to his surprise, they sounded exactly like his unborn daughter’s name — the same 谐音. I’ve always wanted to believe fate works like that: that the small, intricate details aren’t random, that they weave themselves quietly into some larger pattern. I know, from a mathematician’s cold standpoint — mechanical engineer by training, I can’t fully escape it — that the odds of such a coincidence are just a number, calculable and unremarkable. But I’d rather not. I’d rather romanticise it. Some things are better held as 缘分 than solved as probability.
One of the last things I shared with him — about two years ago now — was the little rule I made up to keep my kids off screens. The rule of three, I called it. Watch too much telly and 眼睛会坏，会沉迷，会变笨笨. Your eyes go bad, you get addicted, you turn silly. Half a joke, half not. Looking back, that daft little rhyme was probably one of the seeds that grew into ScreenFreePlayTime.
I’ll be honest — these past few years have been hard.
During Covid (2020), in the stillness of the circuit breaker, I finally had time to think. My firstborn, Elliot, was only about two. And in that unexpected quiet, I looked at the life I’d been leading and barely recognised it. Before that, everything had gone to hockey — helping the school chase honours, five or six days a week, training till nine or ten at night, back in school by seven the next morning. Rinse and repeat. Weekend matches, the National Junior League, the endless build-up to the National School Games. I told myself it was dedication. It was also, I can see now, a large part of why I lost touch with the people who mattered. There simply wasn’t anything left of me at the end of a day.
So I made changes. I did a cross-level deployment to primary school in 2021 (a crafty way of getting Elliot enrolled into a Primary School I was aiming at) . This was where my topsy-turvy journey really began. I wanted more for my kids, more room, more means. I took no-pay leave when Julian + Ariel came along. I sank money into F&B in 2022/2023 and watched it drain away. I took over a hair salon, held it as long as I could, and finally let it go this past January. I over-leveraged too on the stock market and paid the tuition fee that particular lesson charges. I’m learning from all of it now — but there’s not much of a savings cushion left, and I’m building it back up slowly, from a lower start than I’d like.
And yes, if I’m being truthful, that stings. There’s an inferiority that creeps in when I look at my peers, so many of them doing so well. I’m happy for them — I mean that, genuinely. But there’s a lot I can’t stretch to right now. The long overseas holidays. The lavish birthday parties for the kids. All of it.
Still — I count myself lucky. We’re a happy family. They give me something to look forward to every single day. And it happens that the hobby we share, the one that fills our evenings with the most noise and laughter, is one I can actually afford. Board games. I know that for some, spending fifty or sixty dollars on a single game feels absurd. Fair enough. Start with the twenty-to-thirty-dollar ones — there are plenty of good ones there. You don’t need the expensive box to buy the memory.
This same friend — years back, when I hosted a gathering at my place — I still remember his kids after an epic game of King of Tokyo, poring over every card and ability long after the dice had stopped, trying to work out how it all fit together. It frankly gave me lots of satisfaction. That’s the thing screens never quite give you. Not the game itself — the huddle around it.
I tell my students this, so I should be honest enough to turn it on myself: if you truly want something, you’ll find ten reasons to make it happen. And if you don’t, you’ll find ten reasons why you can’t. The truth is, staying close to old friends was always within reach. “No time” was mostly a story I told myself. If I want it — and I do — the reasons to reach out are right there, ten of them, waiting.
So maybe that’s the small resolution buried in all this. Not a grand one. Just: 惜缘. Treasure the fate while the people are still here to treasure it with. Text the friend. Organise the gathering nobody else will. Set up the board on the table and call people over, because that — the laughter around a game, the arguing over rules, the kids scrutinising cards long after the winner’s been declared — that’s what friendship and 缘分 are actually built on. Not through a screen. Though I’ll grant the old DOTA crowd might beg to differ.
For now, I will focus on working hard; 穷则独善其身, and dare I hope, one day, I can do my part for the world: 达则兼济天下.
If you’d like to start a table of your own
- 10 Best Board Games for Family Game Night — where to begin.
- 12 Amazing Board Games Under $20 — you don’t need the expensive box.
- Karak Review — our most epic night at the table.