I had so much fin with this rascal staying up till midnight five nights in a row that I never took a proper photo with him. Although he says he’s a Professor from the University of the Philippines he’s the only guy on a table of eight that would take up my dare to drink Milo mixed with Heineken.
How did I meet this incredibly incongruous character? Let me start with this:
“Jonathan you’ve told this story 15 times in the last 3 days.” ~ Clyde
16th time must be the charm then. After the opening ceremony of HPAIR concluded in Kuala Lumpur, we met up in line for a last round of an unknown pink juice that we ingested and struck up a conversation. We soon realized that we were being evicted from the ceremony as it was concluding and had to find some place to go.
Enter Azwan. A random Indian Malaysian man in the conference wearing a long black trench coat in the tropical summer heat comes up to us and asks what we are doing. The two of us told him that we wanted to go out to town but were unsure where to go to.
“I don’t know you, you don’t know me, we might end up dead, but let’s get in my car and let’s go out to town!” ~ Azwan
Clyde, being FIlipino, immediately called up another four friends to come and the seven of us squeezed into a tiny four-seater Honda Jazz. Azwan, Clyde, me, two Indians, a Bangladeshi, and an Indonesian. That’s how we met.
