was at a wedding dinner at which i was present in lieu of my mother but which resembled an rj prom, for the groom's mother taught at ri and the groom himself being from ri and rj, masses of ri and rj students were migrating back and forth across the mandarin ballroom all night, falling on their former teachers and former classmates, the collegiate and convivial atmosphere less of a wedding than a school reunion. there was also a berkeley contingent and another from stanford, again nearly entirely of rafflesians and nearly as soon as i arrived i walked into louise and alethea. (louise: know what? she's sitting at a table with only men! alethea *defensive*: but none of them are cute! louise: you must come and see this cute engineer at my table. me: butbut, since when has a humanz student ever found an engineer exciting?) and in the midst of the intoxicated gaiety of reunion i am keenly aware of automatically belonging, and more than that, of the certainty that wherever i am i shall continue to belong easily and without contrivance for that is the tribal interconnectedness which we are all bestowed with at raffles, curse or blessing, (for of course i am well aware too, that unfortunately, i have not learnt to fit in as well anywhere else since.) and now i am remembering a visit to joel at stanford in our first year, and being introduced to two of his friends and feeling a certain quiet satisfaction that four people from three different universities two of whom i had never met before that day are sitting down to lunch and are all rafflesians.) and aware too, how much i love belonging to this crowd and this culture, and grateful for how much the school has shaped me, and that i am proud of this belonging, which surely had begun long before i'd ever become a student myself - i had wanted to go to rgs and rj since i was in primary 2, and until i was nine, spent many a days roaming the grange road campus...