I've been in a real depressed state since Thursday, mourning the loss of a close friend of 34 years who met an extremely premature and tragic end outside of Bangkok.

Jimmy and myself with an assorted collection of 9 year olds used to be frequent visitors at the principal's office.... 'star' terrorists in the eyes of the teaching faculty.

Anglo-Chinese Primary then was located along Coleman Street and most of our buddies had parents who worked the rice boats, docks and godowns (warehouses) along the Singapore River..... then a stenching cesspool packed tight on both banks with thousands of families living above the warehouses along the banks themselves or literally on the rice boats.

Oh! We looked forward to rainy days! Then our school bags and clothes would get wet and we'd have a perfect excuse to take them off and jump from 10-15 ft into the river for an afternoon of watery madness... I remembered the regular canings and spankings we got for coming home, dripping wet, smelling like sewage. We did not get sick. We'd compare battle scars the next morning in school, wearing them proudly like war medals.

And when it next rained, the cycle would repeat itself, the whippings all but forgotten as we jumped again into the open toilet bowl that was the Singapore River.

Jimmy, myself and the rest of the gang somehow made it past grade school and into high school, Anglo-Chinese Secondary and we remained friends with me drifting off a little making it into the 'better' classes while he and rest of the guys remained stuck somewhere in the rear. But we never lost our friendship despite me having a few more genteel friends.

Through the next 30+ years we never lost touch but never got to meet on a regular basis either. I had just spoken to him last in November after I'd lost my job then and he he had also just picked himself up recently. I still remember his simple words "Don't worry, brother! ACS (Anglo Chinese School) dont produce regular people!" He was then involved in business in Thailand and we promised each other that we would catch up for a dinner and some 'fun' when I was next in Bangkok.

As fate would have it, I arrived in Bangkok last Sunday and left on Wednesday morning with just too many meetings and appointments for me to rendevous with him . Jimmy passed on Tuesday evening 150miles outside of Bangkok as I was having dinner with a client in town.

When Freddy, one of the 'old boys' broke the news to me on Thursday, I thought it was just like Jimmy to play a fucked up April Fool's joke on me 2 days early. They flew his body back home that evening. I was just numb.

At his wake below his apartment in Braddel Heights, denial turned into an unthinkable reality when I stood in front of his casket.

Oh god, the pain.....the pain was unreal. It felt like someone stabbed me with a carving knife with its serrated edge sawing through a raw nerve. The 2 .38 holes were patched, one through his left ear and the other through his cheek, seared in my mind like a red-hot branding iron.

I wanted to honor Jimmy by staying strong. I could not. I cried silently at first and sobbed like a baby as his wife hugged me.

Our 'brothers' all got together that evening at the wake (we do wakes differently from you guys.... the occassion and casket are normally done at home if its a house or at the open-air void deck on ground level if its a multi-storey apartment block..... and it lasts anywhere between 3-7 days).....despite the mourning, we try to make it a 'happy' occassion treating it as much as a send off party as possible.

Rest in Peace Jimmy Low, your strength, kindness and humanity has touched so many lives