Text Message from a Buddy

Tony has been one of my best friends. I met him at Cal when we were undergraduates: we went to the same church. Like many of the Asian students, he was an aspiring pre-med major who was stuck in the brutal Chemistry 3A - Introduction to Organic Chemistry. This is the class with which Berkeley thrives to weed out those who are unfit for further pursuing the medical track. I was his tutor for Chem 3A and we met twice a week at the Golden Bear Center to discuss homework and lecture materials. We eventually became really close friends and spent vacation together. We took a trip to the Big Apple in 1998 when the northeast was hit by a blizzard. That wind-chilled ferry ride out to the Status of Liberty, the on-top-of-the-world experience at the twin towers (sigh), the yummy Malaysian food, and the all-day pilgrimmage to the MoMA definitely left indelible memories in our friendship.
A native of Oakland and raised in Costa Rica, he is proficient in Spanish but can barely get by with Chinese! He usually head out to the city and hang out with me and try out different exotic restaurants - Cambodian, Indian, Burmese, Morrocean, Afghanistan. We might become some of the most finicky food critics of off-the-beaten-path cuisines. The second picture was taken in 2004 at Twin Peak on a bluesky sunny day. We were checking out that giant pink triangle spread out on the hill facing the Castro. Anyway, Tony is on a business trip to Hong Kong today so he's at 35,000 feet somewhere above the Pacific. He sent me a text message last night that read:

Ok. Don't get into too much trouble while I'm gone. I'll be on email though. Tony.

Thanks buddy. Bon voyage! Hope you get by okay with the broken Chinese!