For my one year Anniversary to I

The same day last year an Airbus A319 arrived at Bangalore international airport, marking the beginning of my unknown journey to India, which turned out to be unforgettable. One year later I start to gather back those memories, little by little, piece by piece, and found myself suffering, terribly - I miss you guys so much.

When Sudhir grabbed me out of Sneha Venkatesh’s apartment, I said to myself: “Mm, this is going to be an interesting journey from the very start", and indeed it was. The next day Xie Jia told me that hours after Rupa arranged my accommodation as she was dealing with the next batch (maybe Duan Yuan and Cornie), Rupa shouted out: “Oh my god, Teng Yun had been put in the wrong apartment!" Then I got a conclusion that Sneha must be very good at sleeping as I said "Hello, anybody in" loudly at least five times and got no reply which convinced me there was nobody in the room.

Then I was taken to the room in which I was supposed to be, this time it was a boy, with his right hand on his head (I was not sure whether it's due to head itch or he was thinking some kind of programming algorithms), looked so young that suddenly came to me an impulse to ask him:" Are you just finished you high school? " We had some communication problems at first as my not-so-fluent Chinese-English met Vinay's “over-fluent” Indian-English. Vinay was making a rapid transit from here to there in the sitting room while he was talking to me and after almost two weeks' observation I finally got to know that Vinay has a habit of walking around inside the room, and very fast.

Another several hours later, someone was knocking the door - Alex came. Immediately after some short greeting, this Mr. Russian asked: “Do you smoke?" Wow, I've never thought of having a smoking friend in TWU, even so, I would expect that it should be me to ask the question first.

The next day I waked up early just for my first destination - the swimming pool in Diamond District. It's a little bit disappointing cause I did a search on Google earth before I came to India and found that there had been water in the pool.

Humpi is a place which I can draw a picture directly from my brain and from scratch. I had my first ride on a motorcycle after 2 minutes of selftraining and along the way got exhausted after replying to the enormous Hellos from the welcoming people on every vehicle we came across. And I can clearly remember the embarrassing moment when I tried to start the motorcycle without inserting the key. By the way, Sarah, I recommend you not go to Humpi again; the road there is not designed for you.

I thought you Indian guys would come along with us, but none of you came, making me sad.

I should tell you the truth that none of the three chilli-eating-contest winners were actually chewing the chillies. Our tongues never touched the chilli. So, Argha, Mark, we are cheaters. Only Roy fulfilled his duty as you could see the sweat flood running out from his forehead.

It felt strange for a Chinese to sing a Russian song in India when Alex and I were sitting at the door of the bus returning from the waterfall in Coorg, singing Russian songs together with Alex singing the original version and me the translated Chinese version. Saumya raised her head to see the two crazy animals, she must be thinking: “What the hell is this!"

Also in Coorg our boat got stuck between the rocks in the middle of the river, which blocked us for a long time, and I call it real adventure. Afterwards, Richa told me that I was described as a monkey jumping up and down in the water. Mm, monkey. It must be Piyush who made the description.

I told Argha that the two saris I bought in Mysore will be given to my sister and my coming wife respectively, but I had to give my non-existent wife's sari to one of my cousins as she showed great interest to it. I should have bought three, but what afterwards - I have many cousins.

When Sonia was giving her Pecha Kucha session about numbers, I was astonished about you Indian guys’ math skills. The genius Megha sitting next to me was able to come out with the answer with a speed far beyond my imagination.

Before coming to India, the HR told me to avoid talking about politics and religions. But I found that these topics don’t break our friendships at all and on the contrary deepen our friendships. Then Git and I talked about Sino-Japan relationships and Pooja shared some opinions about religion and science with me. Oh, sorry, it’s G-EE-t.

Finally the farewell, tears came out easily. I do hope Aditi has taken my suggestions even though you are “strong” as you said. From B1 office to the airport, the three of us didn’t say a single word, just silent, each of us had her/his own feelings. I turned back to see the two girls, Xie Jia’s eye was still tearing and Wang Chao’s face turned pale.

Gone are the days.

In no time after we returned to Beijing, Mao and I set out to the restaurant and for the first time since the last six weeks that I can say:" I am full!" But months later when I was on business in Australia I bacame a regular of an Indian restaurant, partly because it's Indian and partly because the food in OZ is even worse for me. Don't punch me, Ash.

Also in OZ I had a very short visit to Sydney, several phone calls with Leo brought me the feeling that I was in India again. I cannot help recalling those memories, no matter good or bad. Well, the worst was that I got defeated by an India guy while playing table tennis with him. And after I came back to China I told my friends about this, they despise me ever since.

Already addicted to Indian movies, I begin to talk about the actors in India movies with my friends - in "Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam" the hair style of Ajay Devgan should be better designed and in “Ghajini” Aamir Khan should tell Asin about his true identity before Asin died. Also, I’ve changed the ringtone of my mobile phone to "Har Ek Friend Zaroori Hota Hai".