THERE was a time when I liked going for class reunion dinners. It was good to be with former classmates again after more than 10 years, seeing how different people have turned out, how some have put on weight, or lost weight, after so long many years. From our days of t-shirts and faded jeans, it was interesting to see our former classmates in semi-formal attires, speaking differently, looking differently.

“Oo, nice beard!”

“Whoa! Botak already?”

“Wow, Division Manager huh? Nice!”

For me, my class reunion dinners usually came from two main groups of classes. One was the class from secondary school, and the other from the university graduating class. In addition, there were the occasion reunion dinners with our friends from the same residential college in campus and our Master’s degree class, but those were not as regular as the first two. Once the first class reunion dinner got kicked off, a list of our names and telephone numbers was passed around so future reunion dinners could be organised more easily. So there was a period of several years when I found myself at a class reunion dinner every six months or so. I loved joining them, but little did I know then that those were the ‘first wave’ of several waves of class reunion dinners.

Ten to fifteen years after leaving school, most of us were in our early thirties. We were still climbing up the proverbial corporate ladders, working hard at our careers with different levels of success for different people. We were like a bunch of fresh F1 drivers racing round the first few laps, with everyone still quite full of energy and our cars full of fuel. No one among us had made ‘Datuk’ yet (we did not have any outstanding sportsman or woman from our class) and definitely nobody had made his first million yet. It was also with sadness that we learnt at those ‘first wave’ reunion dinners that one or two of our former classmates had died from fatal accidents.

“So Fred, how’s working life as a property broker?”

“You’ve been with the bank all these years? Any chance of making Vice-President soon?”

“Still with the army, Ahmad? What is it now…Major?”

This kind of exchanges went on for a few years, while we were still on the ‘first wave’ of our class reunion dinners. Then after a few years, the dinners stopped.

A decade later, somebody decided that it was time to meet again, and that was when we had our ‘second wave’ of reunion dinners. By then, it had been thirty years since we left school and all of us were in our mid forties, with some pushing fifty. The colour of our hair had changed; so was the amount of hair on our head. Bellies had protruded, waistlines expanded, wrinkles increased and we took longer time to recognise one another over the pre-dinner cocktail.

During the ‘second wave’ dinners, business cards were freely given out, especially by those who had made it to high corporate positions and those with successful own businesses. Conversations included business achievements, personal projects costing millions, overseas assignments, and such high-powered business talk. Some of the less successful among us actually found ourselves out of place among such talk, and it was not wrong to say that a number had decided not to join further dinners because of it. Still, emails and cell phone numbers were collected, to be printed later and distributed. Continuing from the F1 analogy mentioned earlier, the drivers have done more than 20 laps and have passed the half-way mark with a few having lapped the others.

Oddly, while most reunion dinners on the first wave were paid for on a pro-rata basis, many ‘second wave’ dinners were paid for by just one guy, or his company. This would be the highly successful dude who made managing director or chief executive officer, and he had generously agreed to put the entire bill — just a drop in the ocean — on his expense account. Also, while many ‘first wave’ dinners were held in restaurants, many ‘second wave’ dinners were held in golf clubs, again, thanks to former classmates who had become senior members of the club. A third clear difference between ‘first wave’ and ‘second wave’ dinners was that while we had come in our Proton Sagas, Toyotas, and Hondas the first time, many of us came in our BMWs and Mercedes the second time around! Going for a ‘second wave’ reunion dinner one night at the Subang National Golf Club, I was actually glad I had parked my little Kelisa in a dark corner of the car park.

Then came the ‘third wave’ of class reunion dinner. All of us were now in our late fifties going on sixty. From three or two tables for the first and second waves, there was now only one table, at most two, this time. The food was consumed at a much slower pace than before. Conversations centred around playing golf, holidays in China, and visiting sons or daughters living in Australia.

Those of us in the government service had long retired (with a few having made Datuks), those doctors in private practices were still practising, and those who were running their own companies were on semi-retirement, having largely left their businesses to their children. Several of us were suffering from ill health, with some having undergone heart by-pass surgeries. We even joked that we could start a Heart By-Pass Club. Sadly, we also found out that more of us had passed on, and not due to fatal accidents. Cell phone numbers were still exchanged, but on a more personal basis.

At the end of the dinner, there was no talk about any immediate ‘next gathering’. Somehow, there was a sense of (borrowing the words from Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, 1929) “if we meet again, it would be nice; if not, it has been nice.”

Little wonder that I no longer like going for class reunion dinners.